ADIL ANNIE Cl 
TMP NI ERR 
haem RAD PRN: AE 
LENDS Bk apemnnredoman 
oes i ete 
Lic 
BU, 


Necdillal dice dokoedeacnoiine 


Svcs 


lay. 
ies 
3 7 eae ahs 
oe Fy e anf “¢ 
>IT Aye ii ‘) 
nasa ee ode 


=e 


So amen 


ES 
4 
t 
‘ 
* 


RAY 
WA RA SEAN OS OLOM 
S PARE AMMAR 


sia 


isdetiokoee 
Reredeiesk sks th bs anda heat aes 
me RM eS 
anh si 
eed t 
SEAR ES SEM KEE 
WAM Spe STN Rad aL Raa an <n Kea) 
CPUS i ng oterssr ule ae SW d 
otihlatens-tbohesnbaei oy 


see 


Brag 
< 


secrets 
RR At sna 
sib pe : 
; ; aia apap 
Baha yeas eee reer tra se caret 
Bese See pm . 


ees 
% ee ent hee» els ee 
Ve ere pel ane ah c ine wiht we anf ahr 


ne rae 
peetngiy : 
be ie Oya ren 


>. 2s 2 Soe j val ) : 
| BX 1068 .D472 +944 v.2 
- Digby, Kenelm Henry, 1800- 
eel f nea 1880. 

Mores Catholici 


MORES CATHOLICI: 


OR, 


GES OF: FAIS oe 


vn ( 
Wirreas ATH, 
qa f | | / 


=) 
UUM ing iy 
hy 


/ 
MR 
a), 


CINCINNATI: 


PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF 
RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. 


STEREOTYPED BY J. A. JAMES. 
1841. 


ee re ah ae ae oe 


y ait A ati 


bet ia if : hee Ms 
; ie | } Be Re) 5 “am ea ph ihe Mais 
vie cia i “pe 


% a 4 
re 


SUMMARY: 2... 


PHESP HER D+-B.O OK, 


CHAPTER III. 


% 

How the meek possessed the beauties and advantages of the natural world—How all 
creatures were objects of their love—Great enterprises to aid material interests—Preser- 
vation of forests, love of agriculture—Men subjects, not citizens—Yet nature alone was 
felt to be not suflicient—How the Catholic religion sanctified it—The testimony of the 
moderns themselves—Oratories, images, Calvaries, and crosses, erected to sanctify the 
visible nature—Places of pilgrimage—Their origin and use—Isolated crosses—W hy 
they were venerated—The happiness of the meek in relation to the earth —------ p- 3. 


CHAPTER IV. 


How the earth supplied intellectual riches—Of poetry, and the advantage to be de- 
rived from it—Adopted by the holy Fathers, many of whom cultivated it—How it was 
favoured by the secular clergy and by monks—Cultivated by the people—Loved with 
enthusiasm by all classes—Meekness conduced to this—Poetry cultivated by the feudal 
nobles—Character of the poetry of the middle ages—Its power upon minds—Its religious 
tone—Shakspeare, Dante, Tasso, St. Avitus—The old French poets—Their merit— 
Their idea of the end and nature of poetry—Their own lives—Dramatic poetry—The 
TCR ae hte en he ate Bn Bee i oe en i oe ci aia a RE le p. 25. 


CHAPTER V. 


On what ground the riches of learning were possessed by Christians—How it was 
prized, and cultivated, and extended, by means of the Church—The learning of the 
clergy, secular and regular—The ancient libraries—The labour and spirit of the monks 
in writing books—Their attention to the vulgar tongue, to history, and to every branch 
of learning—The care with which manuscripts were preserved, and the enthusiasm with 
which the invention of printing was hailed—How great the love for Jearning—The 
learning of the laity—-General character of the learning of the middle ages—Summary 
of the literature of France from the fifth to the tenth century—Why the sciences are 
more cultivated by the moderns, who are naturally more averse to historical, religious, 
and moral studies—Glance at the modern learning—Yet in point of science, the books 
of the middle ages remarkable—The scholastic doctors as naturalists—The scholastic 
theology—General style of the writers of the middle age—Their Latinity—Influence of 
the Catholic religion on the study of heathen literature—The character of learning in 
application to secular objects—The study of medicine and of law-. ---~------- p. 51. 


CHAPTER VI. 


Rise and progress of the Christian schools—Monastic and secular, parochial and me- 
tropolitan—LEstablishment of universities—Their privileges and honours—The advanta- 
ges of the monastic schools—General character of the ecclesiastical schools—Their disci- 


3 


iv SUMMARY. 


pline—Their dignified and holy aspect—Manners of their students—Their zeal for 
learning—The mode of instruction—Object of the universities—Founded by religion for 
the poor—The evils attending them—Dignity and happiness of the ancient See 
life a mw we ee ne Ho ee ne nen ees teen ae a a a er mr rr ern p- ° 


CHAPTER VII. 


Friendship belonged to the meek—How it was promoted by the Catholic religion, 
by the principles and manners of the meck—The friendships of chivalry—T hose of the 
religious society—Spiritual friendship—Summary of the evidence that the meek possess- 
ed the earth-----------------.-----------------2-- none e centr nr p- 141. 


THE POURTH  BO:.0.Ky 


CHAPTER I. 


The history of the ages of faith in relation to blessed mourning—Objectors remind- 
ed that religion does not obtrude melancholy themes upon men—The mourning of 
the world truly great in all ages; exemplified in the writings of ancient and modern 
times -2.-----------2------4----4----- 322-22 ee nen enn enn ene eees p. 155. 


CHAPTER IL. 


Joy and cheerfulness the pervading spirit of the ages of faith—The Catholic religion 
excludes melancholy—-Examples and sentiments of monks, pilgrims, the holy fathers, 
and of the poets of the world during the middle ages—Yet mourning belonged to the 
blessed race—What kind of mourning—The mourning of nature—The mourning of 
wisdom—The mourning of love--------.~-------~---------. iheananuia mes p. 161. 


CHAPTER III. 


The mourning of piety—The necessity for affliction in the spiritual life; how it was 
sanctified—The contrast to heathen sentiments; examples of the former, and of Christ- 
ians—Louis-Le-Gros—Pélisson—Piety mourned by reason of the contemplation of hea- 
ven, and the remembrance of sin; of a regard for humanity in general, and of a view of 
the evils which are in the world—The insensibility of the crowd—The desolations of 
heresy and of false Christians—Why Catholics must mourn more than other men from 
loving order and knowing truth—The mourning of converts, from the new view of his- 
tory which opens on them, and from the loss of former friends—The mourning caused 
by sympathy with all members of the city of God—The mourning from contemplating 
[ipa uesion OF Vitter ene themes once cee en eee eae CEL Ot aka. cele pine. 


CHAPTER IV. 


The mourning of penitents, that the spirit of self-sacrifice was unknown to the hea- 
thens—The advantages of abstinence discerned by the ancients—The Christian doc- 


trine of penance—The severe principles of early ages—What subsequent abuse was 
CONGUE sos cc ytee tensed c nme meneebe setae woke sus os) eee eae p. 194. 


SUMMARY. v 


CHAPTER V. 


The pilgrimages of penitents, and their mourning—The origin of their appointment by 
the Church—Opinion of the ancient saints—The advantages of travel recognized by the 
heathen philosophers—Grounds and utility of Christian pilgrimages—Examples of those 
of the middle ages—That of St. Paula—The sufferings and mournings of pilgrims— 
The journeys of our Lord—The holy and dignified character of the ordinary traveller 
in ages of faith; the difficulties he had to encounter—The penitential spirit of the Cru- 
saders—The manners prescribed to pilgrims—What assistance was afforded them on 
the way—Hospitals and inns—The protection afforded to travellers by the Holy See— 
Their entertainment recommended—The spirit of hospitality—The interest attached to 
the pilgrim: how far due—His character; his sentiments illustrated from the Chronicle 
of Nicole—The mourning which belonged to his observation of the world. ---- p- 205. 


CHAPTER VI. 


The mourning consequent upon death—The character of death had been changed by 
the resurrection of Christ—The aspect during ages of faith the same in youth as in old 
age—The mourning attached to sickness—The state of sickness also changed—The 
language addressed to the sick—The utility of sickness recognized by the heathen phi- 
Josophers—The Christian consolations for the sick—The manners of the sick in ages of 
faith—-The comforts afforded them by the Church ---.-------------------- p- 244. 


CHAPTER VII. 


The thought of death familiar to men in ages of faith—Why this was so—What 
grounds for mourning at the thought of death—The speedy judgment which follows it 
attested by visions—St. Augustin’s opinion respecting them—The mourning for death as 
a punishment, as having been endured by Christ, as the prelude to judgment—T errors 
of an evil death—The death of the saints—Examples from the chronicles of the middle 
ages; general remarks upon them; uniformity of observances; the reception of ashes; 
the use of the cross; aspect of the body; assumption of the religious habit—Moral cha- 
tacteristics of death in the middle ages; its foreknowledge and supernatural announce- 
ment; examples—The suddenness of many holy deaths—Doctrine of the ages of faith 
on this head—The stedfast hope and tranquillity of men in death—Their last words— 
Administration of the last sacrament—The dying frankly warned of their danger— 
Modern opinion on this head—Zeal in assisting the dying—Remarkable narratives con- 
nected with it—The mourning of survivors, and their consolations—The passing bell— 
The burial—What was the doctrine respecting its importance—Custom of the first 
Christians—The form of burial, monastic, episcopal, collegiate, royal, and secular— 
What mourning was allowed at funerals by the canons--------~-------.--- « p. 256. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


The comfort reserved for mourning survivors—Prayer for the dead; its origin; anni- 
versaries; the office of the dead—Doctrine of the Church; customs derived from it— 
AWTBR EI Rtaye cone Sas ao sh ole EER SRE REL Soe aod ealenuneue p: 302. 


CHAPTER IX. 


The zeal of mourners in erecting tombs over the dead—Customs of the first Christ- 
ians in choice of locality—The catacombs of Rome—What was thought respecting 
burial in holy ground, and why it was desirable—When the dead were first buried in 
churches—Variation of discipline—What the canons prescribed—Style of sepulchral 
inscriptions—Those in the primitive and middle ages—Examples; the symbols and 
imagery of their tombs—Cemeteries—Destruction of ancient monuments by political 
and heretical insanity in latter ages—Modern Cemeteries ---.----..--------- p. 308. 


vi SUMMARY. 


CHAPTER X. 
The argument recapitulated—The happiness of mourners—Objections drawn from 
history answered—The prosperity of the wicked shown to be their punishment—Con- 
Sistor oo = = ae Eee a A oe p- 323. 


THE FIFTH BOOK. 


CHAPTER I. 


The predominant passion of the ages of faith a thirst for justice—The wants of man’s 
nature—The necessity for having a Divine object felt and shown—The language of the 
ancient writers on this head ------------------------------------------ p- 330. 


CHAPTER II. 


The voice of the Church was the voice of desire—The sacred offices expressed the 
thirst for justice, and originated in that desire—Sketch of their history—The observance 
of the canonical hours—The divisions of time—The divisions of the office—The neces- 
sity for a uniform liturgy—-The mode of celebrating the Christian mysteries always es- 
sentially the same—The ecclesiastical offices considered in relation to beauty, justice, 
and truth—Origin and use of ceremony—The ceremonies of the Catholic Church— 
Objections against them considered—The moral value and beauty of the institution of 
the canonical hours—The opinion of the holy fathers respecting the night—The vigils— 
The night of the middle ages—The offices of the morning and day—The holy mass— 
Nones—Vespers—Complin - ------~----------------------+----------- p- 339. 


CHAPTER III. 


General observations respecting the sacred offices—Origin and explanation of the uni- 
versal adoption of the Latin tongue in the public offices of the Western Church—Re- 
marks on the language of the Catholic liturgy—Its symbolic character—The Christian 
use of symbolism, in relation to language and ceremonies—Admirable beauty of the 
offices—Their historic character—The litanies—Remarks on the objections brought 
against them—Grandeur and decorum observed in all parts of the Divine office—lts 
sublime poetry—The beauty and solemnity of what was also visible in the Church— 
Magnificence in that respect of the middle ages—The use of incense traced and explain- 
ed—The custom of having lights—An occasion of great splendour—The procession— 
Its origin and importance—Its symbolic character, described by St. Bernard --.- p. 367. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Importance of music in the estimation of the ancients, of the holy fathers, and of the 
scholastic theologians—History of Church music—That of the middle ages: its excel- 
lence and characteristics—Origin and use of organs—The aurea missa—Decline of 
@htorch Susie a Ste eee Se ea ee late p- 394. 


CHAPTER V. 


Opinion of the middle ages respecting the music of the Divine offices—Psalmody, the 
spirit of the Psalms, became the spirit of the age—The people joined with the clergy in 
singing the office—Provision every where to meet the love of the people for the Catholic 
offices—- Wisdom of this—The external behaviour of men in the churches regulated— W hy 
importance was attached to it—W hat devotions recommended—Beads—Books—The eu- 
logia—No one to enter armed—Reverence due to the sacred mysteries, and the rules which 
it dictated—A visit to a Catholic church—The approach ; the bells; the paradise and por- 
tal; the multitude within, and the variety of character which it comprised—Charm of 
this spectacle—General impressions vary with the hour—The suppliant crowd—The In- 
effable presence—Experience of the ages of faith in respect to it—The churches are only 
monuments of it—The effects described by St. Bonaventura, and verifiedin Tasso. 406, 


p ' ¥ 
“ag * 
Sta? Ca eee 
Ta ae 
oN. -* 


MORES CATHOLICI* 


AGES OF FAITH. 


THE THIRD BOOK. 


CHAPTER III. 


Bur it was not alone within towered cities, or the walls of vast basil- 
icas that religion gave to the meek the possession of the earth. Reli- 
gious men possessed the isles of Iona and Lindisfarne, and hermits 
wild rocks in the desert sea. For those who lived well, who gave their 
hearts to God, and placed their happiness in him, the whole world was 
but a temple, as Vauquelin, the Lord of Iveteaux, said in his address to 
princes.* ‘To a faithful man the whole world is full of riches,’’ as 
St. Bonaventura said, “ fideli homini totus mundus divitiarum est :-—for 
all things good and evil are made to serve him.” Whatever in crea- 
tion was beautiful, being referred to the glory of God, who alone is the 
origin and source of all things, was part of the inalienable inheritance 
of the meek, so that Louis of Blois says, “If you once possess God 
you possess all the rest. He comprises within himself all that delights 
our hearts and gives us pleasure. Being himself the model, the first 
type of all things, he is every thing: he is the increated essence of all 
that is; for without doubt, in his eternal science, he has had from all 
eternity the plan and idea of all that he has made; all that has received 
existence from him has been known to him always, has always lived, 
and will live for ever in his divine thoughts. We ourselves have in 
this manner been eternally present to the thought of God. In this 
sense we are in him from all eternity ; in this sense we are uncreated, 
because in him, in his thought, all things live eternally. Thus, in the 
essence of God are the models of all things which remain for ever with- 
out degenerating. Whereas in this material world, made for our sen- 
ses, we have only, as it were, the signs and emblems of real things. 
Now these signs and emblems pass with time, but the perfections of 
the Creator are everlastingly the same.”’{ «Seek whatever you wish,” 
says St. Augustin, ‘nevertheless you will find nothing dearer, nothing 
Pear nn me oN islet ced et ebomnaene 

* Gouget Bibliotheg. Frangaise, tom. xvi. 113. 

T Meditationes Vite Christi, c. xxi. + Institutio Spiritualis, cap. viii. 

3 


4 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


better than Him who made all things: seek him who made, and in him 
and from him you will have all things.”’* ‘* Observe,” says the holy 
Eucher in a letter to Valerian, “that what I say here is entirely in 
accordance with that attachment which we all have for life. Yes, it is 
in the interest of this love of life that I speak to you now on the part 
of God: for if you find such sweetness in it, all miserable and rapid 
as is this life which passes, ought you not to feel far more attached to 
that which will be eternally happy? ought you not to desire to perpet- 
uate that which gives you so much pleasure, to add a thousand new 
charms to a state which is already so agreeable to you? in a word, to 
render infinite and immortal this imperfect and transitory happiness, 
which, notwithstanding its deficiency, appears still worthy of all your 
affection ?”? We see, therefore, how the saints were disposed to enjoy 
and to sanction that present possession of the riches of the visible na- 
ture, which was promised from the mountain. It seemed to them as 
highly useful in the two first of the three conditions of the internal life, 
in correspondence to which the holy church proposed the recital of the 
gradual Psalms, on which foundation the great Bellarmin composed his 
book De ascensione mentis in Deum, which Cardinal Bona said should 
be read by all those who desire to understand the invisible things of 
God, by those which are made, and who greatly wish not so much to 
know as to use the mystic steps of spiritual ascension, for whom what 
serves to the ruin of others becomes an instrument of elevation, to 
whom the aspect of creatures is a ladder of ascent, not a stumbling- 
block of offence.t It seems then as if this seat of earth were to them 
like heaven; as if angels might repose there or wander with delight and 
love to haunt her sacred shades; their days are only a constant ecstacy, 
their soul a song of praise. ‘These are the meditative souls described 
by the poet, whom solitude and contemplation elevate irresistibly to- 
wards ideas of infinity, that is, towards religion: all whose thoughts 
turn to enthusiasm and prayer; whose whole existence is a mute hymn 
to the Deity and to hope ; who seek in themselves and in the creation 
which surrounds them steps on which they may ascend to God, ex- 
pressions and images to reveal him to themselves, and to reveal them- 
selves to him,t because God is clearer seen by reflection in his creatures 
than in his essence, as the sun in the morning was seen first by the 
Sidonian servant who looked towards the west when he beheld its light 
shining upon the mountains. Profound and astonishing are the medi- 
tations of holy men respecting the love with which these sanctified 
creatures may be regarded by a meek and faithful soul, living in deep 
discernment of goodness celestial, whose broad signature is on the uni- 


verse. For ‘‘ what is paradise ?”’ asks the author of Theologia Germa- 


nica, ‘‘ Paradise is whatever exists: for whatever exists is good and 
delightful and agreeable to God. ‘Therefore also it exists and may 
rightly be called paradise. Paradise is also said to be a vestibule or a 
suburb of the celestial kingdom. Thus also every thing that exists 
may well be called a suburb of eternity. For creatures are a demon- 
stration and a way which leads to God and to eternity. So all things 


* Tract. in Ps. XXXiv. + De Divina Psalmodia, 289. 
+ De Lamartine Harmonics Poétiques et Religieuses, tom. i. 


AGES OF FAITH. 5 


are a vestibule and suburb of eternity, and therefore may deservedly be 
styled paradise. In this paradise all things are allowed to man except- 
ing the fruit of one tree, and that is self-will, or the willing of any thing 
contrary to the eternal will.’”’* Here arises a question. Since all 
things ought to be loved, ought sin to be loved? The answer is, that 
it ought not: for when it is said «all things,’ good is understood ; for 
all that exists is good inasmuch as it exists. The Devil, as far as he 
exists, is good. In this respect, there is no such thing as evil, or what 
is not good. But sin is to wish, to desire, or to love something con- 
trary to God, and to wish this is not to exist, therefore it is not good. 
In brief, nothing is good unless inasmuch as it is in God; but all things, 
as far as they exist, are in God, and indeed much more than in them- 
selves; therefore all things, as far as they exist, are good. If there 
were any thing which was not in essence in God it would not be good ; 
and to wish and desire any thing, which is against God is not in God, 
for God cannot wish or desire any thing against God or otherwise than 
God, therefore that is evil and not good, and also clearly it does not 
exist.’’t Let us remark here, that in this manner the desolations intro- 
duced by heresy were unable to disturb the possessions of the meek; 
for all that existed in heresy was good and catholic; its negations cor- 
responding with all evil, did not exist, for they were against God; but 
all that remained could have been used by Catholics and was used 
by them: heresy therefore is truly nothing, excepting in the form of 
speech. St. Anselm pursues the same argument. «Sin and evil,’’ he 
says, ‘‘are said to be nothing; for God made all things, and all things 
made subsist, and all substance is good in itself. Therefore, what is 
called evil is nothing but the absence of good; heresy is nothing but the 
absence of Catholicism, as blindness is the want of sight, and darkness 
the absence of light.’’t 

This restored harmony between the soul of man and nature, is one 
of the mysteries of the Catholic religion, respecting which Baader 
makes divine reflections. ‘When God the original and positive centre 
of man dwelt within him, man knew centrally all nature; but since 
through sin nature has been transposed and materialized, deprived of 
its primitive spirituality, and that God dwells in man only in an exter- 
nal manner, man no longer knows things centrally but views them from 
aside, and from a part of the circumference.’”? The effect of faith and 
meekness consequent upon it, is to restore man to his centre, and to 
reconcile him with the universal order; for as St. Thomas says of light, 
that it meets with nothing contrary to it in nature, since darkness is 
only the absence of it in places to which it has not penetrated, so in 
nature there is no opposition to God, nor to the will of those who are 
united to him. ‘'The saints, therefore, have a devout love for nature, 
because it is in the divine order; and they have a human affection for 
it, because, as Frederick Schlegel says, they can at present perceive in it 
certain indications, as it were, pointings and winks, which it is impos- 
sible to overlook, denoting a sympathy with the desires and hopes of 
their own hearts. In general nature is only the silent echo and earthly 


SASSER peemenpemememmmmmmine cee nie Le en 
* Theologia Germanica, cap. xlvii. ft Id, cap. xlv. 
{ S. Anselmi Epist. lib. ii. 8. Elucidarii. lib. ii. 
A2 


6 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


repetition of the divine revelation; and yet it is not without ground and 
meaning, when it is said in allusion to the great day of universal deliv- 
erance, that nature like a groaning creature sighs for it with an unutter- 
able longing.* ‘‘ Do the elements perceive God ?”’ asks the disciple in 
the dialogue Elucidarium, ascribed to St. Anselm, to whom the master 
replies, ‘‘God never made any thing which was insensible. For things 
that are inanimate to us indeed are insensible and dead, but to God all 
things live and all things perceive their Creator.”t Not without reason 
then may it be affirmed that the meek of faithful ages loved and pos- 
sessed the joys of nature in all her variety of creatures, of hours, and 
of seasons. Truly to their perfect spirits sweet was the breath of 
morn; sweet her rising, with charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun 
“ When first on this delightful land he spread 


His orient beams; on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, 
Glistening with dew :” 


to them, indeed, the heavens were a ceaseless hymn, and each hour was 
amorning. The tribe of lowly ones may have left for the silent clois- 
ter, raftered halls of state, and the paths to the forest glade where 
knights were wont to hold their tournaments, yet not the more ceased 
they to wander where the muses haunt, clear spring or shady grove, 
or sunny hill, smit with the love of sacred song. It is related in an 
ancient life of St. Maur, from an old manuscript, that St. Babolein, the 
first abbot of the abbey des Fossés used to recite the Psalms every 
night on certain great stones in the river Marne.t Such was his em- 
ployment all through the night, while Philomela wept, and renewed 
her piteous song from bough to bough. Peter the venerable mentions 
too, a certain holy Carthusian monk, who used often to spend the night 
in the open air in order to contemplate the sky and the works of the 
Creator.|| Daniel’s fountain near Malmesbury, was so called from the 
holy Bishop Daniel, who was fond of spending whole nights at its side 
while singing the praise of God. Gervais, the excellent Archbishop of 
Rheims, a holy, learned, and prudent prelate, had so loved forest wan- 
derings in his youth, that he placed before the gate of his palace a 
brazen stag, with an inscription, stating that he did so, in order to be 
reminded of his native woods. They loved the clear fountains, and the 
asphodel meadow, and the countless forms and tones of that admirable 
nature which each returning spring seemed more fair than ever; it filled 
their eyes with pleasant tears to trace the goodness of their God in 
these his lower works, and they no longer wondered that the Samaritan 
woman should have recognised, and confessed the Messiah at the foun- 
tain whom the Jewish people knew not in the temple.§ What a deep 
sense of the loveliness of this beautiful earth is shown by the Capuchin 
friar Lombez, where he reproves the complaints of earthly sadness, and 
traces expressions of horror for the world to a root of dangerous melan- 
choly.{ ‘*If,’’ saith he, «‘amidst so many riches and beauties we are 
in a hard exile, as we are in fact, the dignity of our souls must be very 


* Philosophie der Leben, 93. + Lib. i. cap. 5. 
t Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. v. 161. 
|| S. Petri Ven. de Miraculis, lib. ii. c. 29. § S. Hieronym. Epist. xcv. 


q ‘T'raité de la joie de ame. 


AGES OF FAITH, 7 


great, and our true country wondrous fair, and the love of God for us 
surpassing all conception, since he banishes us to such an admirable 
world, a place so adorned with all kinds of loveliness.”’* Even the 
austere Carthusian order, bred in the ancient forest, the deep stable of 
wild beasts, rejects not the possession of nature’s softer beauties. Wit- 
ness Calci’s holy pile, with its lovely cloister, and its separate gardens, 
so fair and odoriferous with orange trees and every sweet flower, with 
its enchanting groves of olives clothing those surrounding Apennines, 
which are seen through long vistas of arches. The Hexameron of St. 
Basil, a kind of course on natural history, was preached during the fast 
of Lent both morning and evening ; the scientific part is defective, but 
one of the greatest modern writers admits that the details are charming. 
The history of plants and animals gives rise to moral instructions, a 
common practice of the middle ages, as when those cones of the pine 
which cover the mountain side, composed of a multitude of grains 
which are kept in close union by a resinous cement, are said by father 
Elzear of Archer to be an emblem of religion which consists in the 
union of many persons connected by charity; or as when father Diego 
de Stella compares the pleasures of the world to those reeds which 
when they shoot out first in the spring of the year, do with their fresh 
green colour delight the eyes for a while, but if you do break them, 
and look within them, you shall find nothing there but emptiness and 
hollowness ; or again, as when Dante compares the dropping away of 
earthly pleasures to the fall of the light autumnal leaves, 


“ One still another following, till the bough, 
Strews all its honours on the earth beneath; ”’ 


or as when Albert the Great shows in his eighth book on animals, that 
in their instinct we should recognise the divine wisdom, since in what- 
ever degree possessed by some, it is still but the universal instinct, and 
not greater in one than in another, excepting that it may be more de- 
veloped in some by certain circumstances. All creatures were objects 
of their love, so that even the authors of fable conceive a case of one 
who condemned himself to a voluntary penance for having killed a 
faithful dog. ‘The multitude of dogs without masters which are found 
in Lisbon, is attributed to the sensitiveness of the Portuguese, and their 
unwillingness to deprive any animal unnecessarily of life.t 

Monteil, in describing the virtue of the French curates, takes care to 
show that one point of their charge to rustics and peasants was to be 
kind to their animals.t He quotes one question in an ancient tract De 
Institutione Confessorum, from the chapter concerning husbandmen and 
rustics, in which the demand occurs ‘si boves nimis fatigavit unde de- 
struantur.’’ «The sorrows of beasts,’ says Frederick Schlegel, and 
he expresses but the sentiments of men in the ages of faith, ‘are cer- 
tainly a theme for the meditation of men, and I could not agree to the 
justice of regarding it as a subject unworthy of reflection, or of per- 
mitting sympathy with them to be banished from the human breast.’?|j 
And yet to plead in behalf of that sympathy would now be often con- 
sidered as indication of a weak or defective intelligence; and rather 


* Traité de la joie de ame, chap. viii, + Letters on Portugal to Orosius, ii. 
+ Hist. des Frangais, tom. iii. 384. || Philosophie des Lebans. 


8 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


would he seem of sound and perfect nature who would be willing to 
partake of that amusement of the Roman epicures which Seneca de- 
seribes, of watching the mullet expiring in the channel on the table, in 
order to observe how its golden and red colours faded, so alive are men 
to every barbarous joy! The notion of religion as compatible with 
natural savage cruelty and hardness of heart was unknown in the 
middle ages. St. Pius V. prohibited the bull-fights as inconsistent 
with piety. 

The monk Frodoard, speaking of St. Remi, in his History of the 
Church of Rheims, says, that ‘his sanctity moved not only rational 
creatures but even tamed those that are without reason, and that one 
day as he was giving a familiar repast to some intimate friends and re- 
joicing to see them happy, some sparrows came down and began to eat 
crumbs out of his hand;’’* he relates also that St. Basle, who lived as 
an anchorite on the mountain near Rheims, having saved a poor beast 
that had fled from the forest, pursued by a hunter whose dogs seemed 
to forget all their ferocity on approaching his little cell, it used to be 
remarked by all hunters in that forest ever afterwards that any beast 
who could gain the heights in that forest was safe, for that then the 
dogs would lose their ardour and the hunters their courage.t St. Mein- 
rad, the hermit of Einsiedelin, in the ninth century, after the example 
of St. John the apostle of charity, had tamed two ravens which showed 
their fidelity at his death, by pursuing his murderers to Zurich with 
horrible cries, which led to their detection.t{ The same affection for 
animals is expressly ascribed to St. Anselm, St. Francis, and many 
other great servants of God. St. Francis used often to say his canoni- 
cal hours with the birds, near their leafy houses. St. Bonaventura de- 
scribes the rapturous joys of contemplative devotion by a divine irra- 
diation in the mind as exerting an influence even externally upon the 
body, and filling the soul with a desire to embrace every creature of 
God, sometimes impelling the body to motion, and at others to rest 
from excess of sweetness. ‘Then whatever the mind beholds it consi- 
ders it as abounding with a certain divine sweetness.||_ The master of 
the sentences declares it to have been the opinion of the holy fathers, 
that no creature would have been poisonous, or hurtful to man if he had 
not sinned.§ In the ages of faith men believed that the friends of God 
would be protected from the evil which nature had contracted; they 
evinced an affection even for inanimate creatures which were not exclu- 
ded from the sphere of their benevolence. St. Severinus repented hav- 
ing uttered an imprecation on the tree whose branches had wounded 
him as he hastened to serve a church, and alighting from his horse, he 
prostrated himself at its roots and besought God to spare it. St. Gre- 
gory of Tours, says, that this noble saint used to gather flowers in the 
season when lilies unfolded their beauteous forms, and that he used to 
fasten them on the walls of his church.§ On the external walls of 
churches, these humble plants were carved in stone, as we read of 
Melrose. 


* Lib. i. cap. xi. t Id. lib. ii. cap. 3. 
{ Tschudi Einsiedlische Chronik. || Stimul. Divini Amoris, pars iii. cap. 6. 
§ Petr. Lombard. Sentent, lib. ii. Distinct. 15. § De Gloria Confessorum, 50. 


AGES OF FAITH. 9 


“Spreading herbs and flowerets bright, 
Glistened with the dew of night ; 
Nor herb, nor floweret glistened there, 
But was carved in the cloister arches as fair.” 


The holy vestments used in the abbey of Lindisfarne were adorned 
with figures of the wild animals that lived upon the neighbouring shore. 
Books of hours used to contain lessons in agriculture attached to the 
calendar; these appear in the Heures de Rouen in gothic letters and in 
many others. ‘The miniatures of the ecclesiastical calendar represented 
the rural labours of each season, which are also sculptured along with 
the signs of the zodiac on the front of the cathedral of Cremona, built in 
1274: and on the brazen gates of Loretto, the rustic youth beholds an 
image of his own occupations in the noble figure of Adam, breaking the 
ground in pursuance of the primal sentence. Nor was it only in spec- 
ulation that nature was enjoyed; the undertakings of men in the mid- 
dle ages, in favour of material interests, were as arduous as our own, 
though generally for a nobler end. Dante does not disdain to borrow a 
similitude from the Flemings, ‘and their mound, ’twixt Ghent and 
Bruges to chase back the ocean, fearing his tumultuous tide that drives 
towards them, and from the Paduans and theirs along the Brenta to 
defend their towns and castles, ere the genial warmth be felt on Chia- 
rentana’s top.’’ But mightier tasks than these were accomplished by 
the Teutonic order in Prussia, of which the greatest was the Cyclopian 
bank of the grand master Meinhard, in the thirteenth century, between 
Elbing and Marienburg, to prevent the inundations caused by the 
Nogat and the Weichsel, by means of which a vast portion of land was 
reclaimed and made subservient to human wants. During six years 
thousands of men and thousands of waggons were employed day after 
day till 1294, when the amazing work was finished. ‘The wanderer in 
our day stands rivetted with astonishment at the spectacle, and admits 
that the name of Meinhard must be immortal. ‘His magnificent works 
proclaim how excellent he was,’’ says the old chronicle, ‘for he dared 
to undertake a thing which other men would not have had courage to 
imagine.”’* In ages when the ideal of justice was believed to be St. 
Louis seated after hearing mass at the foot of an oak in the forest of 
Vincennes, making his friends sit around him, and then giving audience 
to all who had business to transact with him, it is not strange that inde- 
pendent of motives of public economy the beauties and interests of 
nature should have become even an object of legislative care. The 
wisdom of the middle ages provided by a multitude of minute statutes 
and practices for the preservation of forests and secured their perpetuity. 
To protect the celebrated pine forest near Ravenna, many sovereign 
pontiffs issued briefs, testifying the utmost watchfulness in its regard; 
as in the Virgilian ‘line alluding to the provision of the early Roman 
laws,t the woods were deemed worthy of consular solicitude. The 
simple manners which prevailed among all classes of society kept men 
familiar too with the humble charms of the animal world. The 2; vpce- 
fic Was a personage belonging to our Christian annals. The blessed 
confessor Paschalis, when a youth, tended the flocks in the fields, and 


* Voigt, iv. 34. + Petrus Crinitus de Honest. Discuss. iv. 
Vor. I1.—2 


10 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


he ever loved that kind of life, as being favourable to the exercise of 
humility and the preservation of innocence. ‘The occupations of agri- 
culture form part of the work entitled the innocent pleasures by Platina 
of Rome. ‘The sons of kings used to be familiar with their flocks upon 
the mountains, beauteous with wild flowers, as the Pass of Storek and 
the Leitern See, which looks on Engelberg’s holy pile. Charlemagne, 
every morning after mass, used to pass in review the poultry of the 
lower court. We read of many nobles in the middle ages who beliey- 
ed, as Poggius says, that a country life and the woods, conduce more to 
the attainment of nobility than cities, and who would have approved of no 
passage in Cicero’s Orations more than that in which he asks, «* What 
cupidity could be in Roscius, who always lived in the country, and was 
occupied in agriculture,—a life greatly removed from cupidity, and con- 
nected with duty.”’* Men were then subjects, but not citizens,—a term 
which the modern sophists have adopted, without troubling themselves 
to reflect upon its meaning. In the heathen time, city-states really ex- 
isted, as in the Athenian and every similar democracy, where each citi- 
zen was in some way settled in the city, and had the right of possessing 
a house there. Even in Homer’s time, every thing that concerned the 
government of a state was connected with the city, and the military 
families and the nobles dwelt in it.t Hence, itis viewed in Homer as a 
disgrace or a misfortune for a noble to live among the bondsmen in the 
country, which was abandoned to labourers of the soil. Hence the 
distinction between the term an Athenian and inhabitant of Attica. 
Even Plato used the former as a more honourable appellation than the 
latter, though Miller remarks, that even in Athens, there was among 
the people a constant struggle of feeling between the turbulent working 
of the democracy and the peaceful inclination to their ancient country 
life. ‘The Christian state left men free to choose the latter, which reli- 
gion sanctified, and the term of citizen could thenceforth only be appli- 
ed in its natural and classical signification, to denote those who had a 
corporal residence in cities.t The country was no longer left exclu- 
sively to the rustic labourers: the priests of holy Church spread them- 
selves over it; the nobles were attached to their ancient forest life; and 
we read of many who in youth, or in seasons of recollection, from a de- 
sire of greater innocence, would have deigned, like Apollo, to dwell 
beneath the roof of Admetus, mixing with his menial train, driving along 
his flocks, whether they roved through the winding valley or rested in 
the upland grove. So clear and powerful is Nature’s voice, that even 
Socrates, after all his arguments to prove the superiority of the city to 
the country, was no sooner seated peaceably in the cool shade of the 
plane-tree, on the banks of the Ilissus, than he confessed that he felt the 
sweet influence of that retreat. ‘‘O dear Phedrus,”’ he exclaims, ‘do 
I seem to you, as to myself, to be experiencing a divine impression?” 
and his companion replies, ‘‘'Truly, O Socrates, contrary to custom, a 
certain flow of eloquence seems to have borne you away.”’ And he re- 
sumes,—‘* Hear me then in silence ; for in fact this place seems to be di- 
vine.”’|| ‘This loving familiarity with nature was inseparable from men in 


* Pro C, Roscio, Amer. t Od. xxiv. 414, 
+ An instance is cited by Voigt, Geschichte Preussens. iii. 484. | Plato, Phedrus. 


AGES OF FAITH. 11 


whose hearts resided so deep a tone of the eternal melodies; but so also 
was the conviction which experience had given to St. Augustin, that it 
was not nature alone, or the beauties and delights of earth, that could ever 
satisfy the soul of man: ‘that which it seeks is the true and supreme 
joy, which, as St. Bernard says, is derived, not from the creature but 
from the Creator ; which, when received, no one can take from it; to 
which, in comparison, all gladness is affliction, all tranquillity pain, 
all sweetness bitterness, all that can delight, vexation.” The pretended 
revelations of nature, independent of that tradition by which society ex- 
ists, are but the empty boast of a vain philosophy. Left in the pres- 
ence of nature alone, uninformed and unsanctified, man degenerates rap- 
idly into a savage state. Without religious worship, which is the real- 
izing of the abstract idea of the divinity, that idea would soon be effaced 
from his thoughts ; and, as Lord Bacon says, ‘‘No light of nature ex- 
tendeth to declare the will and true worship of God.* However con- 
ducive to the physical enjoyments of man, experience shows that a life 
in the country, without the constant resources of the Catholic religion 
and its rites, becomes in the end completely a Pagan life, natural in its 
motives as well as in its pursuits and pleasures. Without an altar, not 
the shade of the lofty groves, not the soft meadows, not the stream de- 
scending from the rocks, and clearer than crystal, winding through the 
plain, can sanctify the soul of man. Left in the presence of nature 
alone, it faints and becomes like earth without the dew of heaven ; it is 
oppressed by the contemplation of that vast immensity ; it loses its tran- 
quillity and its joy. Man in himself can find no rest or peace: and 
how should he find repose in the works of nature, when these are them- 
selves for ever restless? The fire mounts in a perpetual course, always 
flickering and impatient; the air is agitated with conflicting winds, and 
susceptible of the least impulse; the water hurries on, and knows no 
peace; and even this ponderous and solid earth, with its rocks and 
mountains, endures an unceasing process of degradation, and is ever on 
the change. Besides, how should spirits of human kind find content in 
nature, when, as the Stagyrite proclaims, nature is in most things only 
the slave of man?’’t But in his Creator has the creature present rest, 
and in the pledge of grace revealed supernaturally from on high, has he 
eternal peace, immortal felicity. We must leave the laurels, and the 
fountains, and the swans, and all the harmonies which resound along 
the margin of rivers, and we must enter the streets with the multitude, 
in quest of that temple of peace where the Lamb of God is offered up 
for sinners. Abandoned to nature, the man who is endowed with a 
delicate and sentimental soul, is found to breathe only the vague desires 
of the modern poet, whose ideal may be seen in that Burns, of whom 
we read that ‘he has no religion; his heart indeed is alive with a 
trembling adoration, but there is no temple in his understanding: he 
lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt: his religion at best is an 
anxious wish—like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.” The error of 
the modern poets consists in their not viewing the visible world in union 
with the mysteries of faith, and in supposing that a mere description of 


— eeeSsSsaesesesese 


* Advancement of Learning. ft Aristot. Metaphysic. Lib, i. 2. 
+ Edinburgh Review, 1828. 


12 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


its external form can satisfy even the thirst after poetic beauty, which is 
inherent in our nature. Dante is blamed by them for mixing scholastic 
theology with his song; but it is precisely this very mixture which 
gives that charm to it which attracts and captivates the thoughtful heart. 
The same error is committed with regard to life ; and while spirituality 
and faith, with all their beauteous expressions and sublime affecting 
symbols, have been effaced, instead of increasing, proud and sensual men 
have forfeited the possession of the present good. The earth is infected 
by its inhabitants and its joy is passed away. Observe the character 
of those cantons of Switzerland where the Catholic religion is unfelt, 
and men are left in presence of nature alone, without an object or a 
sound to recall the images of faith, What overpowering melancholy 
reigns in those valleys, notwithstanding all that dressing, fattening, har- 
rowing, and distillation of the earth, in hopes of gain! What a silence 
is there, excepting when interrupted by the fall of avalanches, the roar 
of torrents, and the eternal sighing of the winds! What a moral blight 
has attended the political demarcation of the territory! There are in- 
deed, here and there, some immense enterprises for the sake of profit 
and pleasure, some unsightly buildings, the fruit of careful speculations 
to afford luxury and ease to the distempered inhabitants of licentious 
cities, who come here in the summer season, in hopes of enjoying some 
vague dream of Arcadian life, united with the solid advantages of the 
Epicurean form: but no where do you see the beautiful chapel or the 
venerable cross; no where any thing to realize a tender or a sublime 
idea; no sacred sentences, no devout image, to exalt men to the spiit- 
ual life. You pass as on the borders of those Berne Lakes, whole vil- 
Jages without a church ; and upon the sloping lawns you can only hope 
to find some ruins of a convent, or the tower of some ancient church, 
which you will find converted into a barn or a magazine. Yet even 
amidst the devastated valleys, covered with sand and rocks and the bare 
trunks of broken pines, ploughed up with the rains and burnt by the 
fire of the summer’s day, which now present that pale and horrid aspect 
of a fearful nakedness, the Catholic religion would have planted her 
peaceful and her beauteous trophies. hat religion has left the stamp 
of her genius and the imperishable monuments of her faith in the deserts 
of the East, and on the wildest rock of Alps or Pyrenees, amidst the 
lions under the fires of the tropic, as well as amidst the bears and ice- 
bergs of the pole. Where is there a garden of more rich and beauteous 
variety than in the very valleys surrounding the tracks over which 
heresy has passed? Even to the mere poetic soul, what a delightful 
accompaniment to the silent hymn of nature is that chiming of angelic 
bells which rises at evening and at noon, and at the sweet hour of 
prime, from all sides of a Catholic valley?—bells that may well be 
termed of the angel, that are not rung, as in other lands, by base hands, 
through love of sordid gain, to celebrate some occasion of sensual joy, 
temporal and vain, soon to change to mourning as vain, but by pious 
hands, through the devout intention of inspiring men with thoughts of 
prayer. How inspiring is it to hear the great bells of the abbey of En- 
gelberg at the fourth hour of the morning, awakening the echoes, amidst 
the rocks and eternal snows of Titlis, and piercing the vast forests of 
the surrounding Alp! What consolation to the weary pilgrim, when 


AGES OF FAITH. 13 


stopping to shelter from the storm under some covered bank which 
charity has erected by the mountain’s side, he beholds, even there, 
some poor prints, representing in successive stages, the sacred passion 
of our Lord, and dictating some seraphic aspiration! How sweet and 
cheering,—and in a philosophic point of view, how important,—is all 
this, and how it cherishes and strengthens our young affections! But 
as the swimmer in the blue flood of the arrowy Rhone sees the pale 
line of snow-fed waters issuing from the devasted bed of the Arve, and 
no sooner plies his right arm to be borne up that new channel, and en- 
ters its sullen wave, than instantly a sudden cold and deathlike chill 
strikes through his whole body; so is the full glow of youthful devo- 
tion checked and chilled when we pass from Sarnen to the Scheidek, or 
from Soleure and Freyburg to the shores of the Leman Lake. Pro- 
testantism knows no neighbourhood: it goes on repeating its old and 
barbarous invectives, like those sullen waters of the Arve, which pass 
down with the Rhone in the same channel without blending into it, 
without losing their chilling aspect or acquiring the least portion of its 
warmth or of its purity. And would you know how the loss of the 
joys of the Catholic faith is felt by those of the moderns themselves, 
who seem to have a finer and more spiritual nature? Hear these lines, 
that are enough to make the blood weep from one’s heart :— 


“Alas! our young affections run to waste, 
Or water but the desert; whence arise 
The weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste 
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes; 
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, 
And trees whose gems are poison; such the plants 
Which spring beneath her steps as passion flies 
O’er the world’s wilderness, and vainly pants 
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.” * 


‘The ancients tried all the means which imagination could propose or 
wealth and power execute, in order to enjoy. Nature, and avail themselves 
of her possession. ‘I'he Emperor Adrian, after visiting the provinces of 
his empire, wished to concentrate, at his country villa of Tivoli, what- 
ever had most struck his attention. ‘There he built the Lyceum, the 
Academy, the Prytanea, as they were at Athens. There he formed 
the valley of Tempe, like that in Thessaly ; there he constructed the 
Canope, like that near Alexandria. All this was not sufficient: he con- 
ceived the design of representing there the Elysian fields: but at this 
stage he was attacked by the mortal illness of which he died at Baia. 
‘The poor insatiate moderns too, in vain attempt to satisfy themselves 
with the beauty of parks, and the imitation of nature, in lakes and gar- 
dens, interspersed with objects of heathen art and the plants of eastern 
clime, the cypress and her spire :— 


(3 


Show the plants divine and strange 

That every hour their blossoms change, 
Ten thousand lovely hues! 

With budding, fading, faded flowers, 

They stand the wonder of the bowers 
From morn to evening dews.”’ 


i OE a 
* Byron. 


B 


14 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Then comes the complaint of Gilbert, lamenting that the hopes of ge- 
nius, the joy and triumph of nature, should be at an end. « Unhappy 
guest at the banquet of life, I appear for one day and die! I die: and 
on my grave no one will scatter flowers. Farewell, fields that I love! 
and thou, sweet verdure! and thou, smiling solitude of woods! Sky, 
beauteous canopy for man! admirable Nature! for the last time fare- 
well!”’* And even before they learn to contemplate this separation, af- 
ter all their pains, there is, even amidst these beauteous bowers, the 


“‘ Something still that prompts the eternal sigh !” 


For, even to the mere poetic imagination, nature alone cannot suftice ; 
and in Paradise itself, man could not be happy if God or his angels did 
not visit him. They look around from their fairy halls, and inhale the 
ambrosial aspect; but do they not sometimes lament that, when evening 
sinks o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft, there sounds no deep bell in 
the distant tower, no faint dying-day hymns steal aloft from cloistered 
cells, to make the forest leaves seem stirred with prayer? Their own 
poet represents his hunter looking from the steep promontory upon the 
lake, and exclaiming, ‘*‘ What a scene were here, could we but see the 
turrets of a convent gray on yonder meadow !’’— 


“ For when the midnight moon should lave 
Her forehead in the silver wave, 
How solemn on the ear would come 
The holy matin’s distant hum: 
While the deep peal’s commanding tone 
Should wake in yonder islet lone 
A sainted hermit from his cell, 
To drop a bead with every knell.” 


Sweet is the breath of morning: but when so sweet as during those 
early walks between paintings of the sacred Passion, to the first mass 
of the Capuchins, whose convent crowns the towering rock, or is em- 
bosomed in the odoriferous grove ? 

The youth of green savannahs spake 
And many an endless, endless lake, 
With all its fairy crowds 

Of islands, that together lie, 

As quietly as spots of sky 

Among the evening clouds.” 


Lovely is this painting of your Wordsworth, but would it acquire no 
fresh charm from thinking of those convents, which might cover them, 
as in those islands of the Adriatic gulf, seen from the towers of Venice, 
and from the music of those bells, which would sound along its shore, 
for the angelus or the benediction? might not the vesper hymn suggest 
a sweeter image than occurs in the Virgilian line, which speaks of the 
hour in which begins the first rest of wretched mortals?+ Contemplate 
again the seasons of the year; see what a charm descends upon the en- 
amelled garden, from its reference to the altar; for why, cries the tender 
poet, ‘*O flowers, raise ye your full chalices to the light of morning, 
why in the damp shade exhale those first perfumes which the day 
breathes? Ah, close them still, flowers that I love; guard them for the 


* Ade, written eight days before his death. { Mneid, ii. 


. AGES OF FAITH. 15 


incense of the holy places, for the ornament of the sanctuary. The sky 
inundates you with tears, the eye of the morn makes you fruitful; you 
are the incense of the world, which it sends up to God.”’* Sweet is it 
to recline, composed in placid peace, upon the shady lawn, when violet 
and hyacinth, with rich inlay, embroider the ground, more coloured 
than with store of costliest emblems, and to hearken to the verse of 
some wild minstrel, who sings by the clear stream which flows through 
the meadow, on a summer’s day; but sweeter still to hear the litanees 
and hymns of holy church rise from the midst of waving corn, when 
her annual rogations implore a blessing on the first fruits of the earth, 
and when the cross and banner of her bright processions glitter through 
the darksome foliage.t Nor are thy reviving Sports, innocent and 
playful youth, insensible to the universal influence of the church’s sea- 
son. Well I know how dear to the bold swimmer is the plunge into 
the clear blue flood of the impetuous Rhone, which hurries him along 
amidst froth and waves, sporting as in a bed of waters, or the fall from 
those projecting rocks, which stand at the entrance of the Gulf of 
Lecco, under that noble promontory on which stood the Tragedia of 
Pliny ; but there is to him even a sweeter moment, when winter first 
departs, and he hastens to the remembered pool, along the embowered 
banks of the bright stream which first hears the sweet bird that harbin- 
gers the spring, and there gathers those budding osiers, which each re- 
turning year our mother Church puts into his hands to serve as palms, 
to be borne on that day of mystic triumph, when she celebrates the en- 
trance of the Son of God into Jerusalem. ‘These are the resources of a 
northern clime; but yet, methinks, even thy stately forests, noble Va- 
lencia, where innumerable old and lofty palm trees shade the shore of 
Alicant, would lose half their interest to the Christian eye, if their 
branches were not yearly thinned for that solemn festival, and sent in 
offering to the eternal city. In a country stripped and dismantled by 
the modern philosophy, one lives only in visible presence of what pass- 
es, like the leaves of the trees, or the flowers of the field; and the 
youthful race, which is the most susceptible of the charms of nature, 
like summer flies, is sought for in vain, when autumnal rains have cool- 
ed the rivers, and despoiled the bowers of their foliage. Without very 
extraordinary grace the progress of seasons and of years is felt by the 
noblest dispositions, which are the most apt for every change, with 
an emotion of deeper and deeper melancholy ; but in a Catholic land 
one consorts continually with things that never die; and as one grows 
older, one only feels as if endowed with higher and higher privileges, 
which are to be crowned at length in the last supernal state, to which 
death is but the momentary passage. 

This mutual influence of nature and faith, multiplying and expressing 
each other’s joys, was profoundly felt by the meek possessors of the 
earth during the middle ages, and hence arose a number of beautiful 
monuments, the mouldering ruins of which still adorn our country, 


* De la Martine. 

‘¢ The benediction of the new fruits of the earth used to be celebrated on the feast of 
the Ascension, that of orchards on the festival of St. James the Apostle, and that of the 
new grapes on the day of St. Xystus. [*] 

[*] Martene, tom. iv. 


16 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


though their origin and object may have been long forgotten. Histori- 
ans record the profusion of oratories which were destroyed in England 
when the new religion was first established. These little chapels, em- 
bowered amidst the pale ivy or the myrtles that love the shore, were 
common in the days when above all things the woods were dear to 
men, and the divine muse was beloved everywhere, found to be sweet 
amidst the woods, and sweet upon the waves, combining all the fabled 
charms of Orpheus and Arion. Petrarch beautifully moralizes upon 
the fountain of Vaucluse, and declares that it is his resolution to raise 
an altar there in the garden which hangs over the water. ‘It shall. 
not,’ he continues, ‘‘be dedicated, like those of Seneca, to the gods of 
the rivers, or the nymphs of the fountains, but in honour of the Virgin 
Mother of that God who has destroyed the altars and demolished the 
temples of all other gods.”” ‘The month of May was called the month 
of Mary, when men would devoutly repeat her office as they walked 
in some garden, bright with the sweet hue of eastern sapphire that was 
spread over the serene aspect of the pure air, at the rising of the sun, 
and beheld the swans majestically resting on the limpid waters. The 
waters too were claimed, and images of saints and hermits, and mitred 
fathers, were seen, stretching the hand of benediction over them, as at 
the Balbian promontory on the Lariun lake. The course across the 
Lagunes, for eighteen miles from Venice to the Camaldolese convent 
on the isle of St. Clement, is marked by an image of our Lady, with a 
lamp burning, which seems almost to touch the sea, over which it casts 
so far its placid beam. In the midst of the lake of Garda is a point, 
mentioned by Dante, where the bishops of Trent, Verona, and Brescia, 
would have the right of giving their benediction; and I have heard the 
sweet and solemn sound of litanee or sacred hymns rise from boats of 
pilgrims, bearing cross and holy banners, across Lugano’s lake, when 
boat used to respond to boat while onward hastening. 

Wherever a wild and broken rock projected, or a beauteous hill rose 
from a river’s bank, there was sure to be some spot dear to piety, which 
scholars and poets would unite to celebrate, like that of Mount Valerian 
on the Seine, which forms the subject of an elegant Latin history by 
Briezac. As the morning sun first visits the mountain heights, so does 
the great and admirable sun of justice make his grace to shine first at 
the door of the solitary hermit, and of those who live retired upon the 
points of rocks. When St. Vincent of Paul was ordained priest, he re- 
paired to a chapel situated on a mountain in the midst of a wood, near 
the river T'arne, and there he said his first mass. The presbytery of 
St. Vit of Mont-Meillan, being on the side of a hill, commanded a most 
beautiful view over the country. The curate, in the year 1695, thought 
this garden was too beautiful to be left without rendering service to re- 
ligion. Accordingly he had the piety to convert it into a Calvary, with 
grottos and cells for prayer; so that a crowd of devout people used to 
come there on Sundays and festivals from the neighbouring parishes.* 
Marchangy makes his traveller of the fourteenth century remark, that as 
he mounted the heights of Fourvicres at Lyons, the view became so 
enchanting, that he was almost certain to find at the summit of the 


* Lebuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom, v. 544. 


AGES OF FAITH. 17 


mountain some place of pilgrimage. ‘+ For I have remarked,” he adds, 
‘‘in the course of my travels that religion never fails to invite tender or 
suffering souls to places, whose natural beauty attests the power of the 
Creator.””* The fields and level shores were, indeed, associated with 
religious mysteries: for, that standing of Jesus by the lake of Genesa- 
reth when the multitude pressed upon him, that seeing of the two boats 
and the occupation of the fishermen, that walk through the corn with 
the disciples on the Sabbath, of which men had heard from infancy al- 
ways in the same sweet season of the summer,}t made such an impres- 
sion, that they could never enjoy the beauties of nature, or the recrea- 
tions of a country life without thinking of their blessed Redeemer; but 
mountains were especially dear to religion from the remembrance of that 
mount whose name has given an universal and beloved fame to the pale 
verdure of the olive, from that of Thabor, and Sinai, and Ephreim, which 
fed the holy Samuel. It was on mountains that God manifested him- 
self to the Hebrews of old, and it was on them that the tremendous 
mysteries of human redemption were accomplished. Mountain heights, 
enclosing on their brown and mossy moors the spot where earliest wild 
flowers grow, were dear to village children, but so were they also to 
the eye of faith, as symbolical of a religious life; for mountains are the 
abodes of the most noble animals, the lion and the eagle; the source 
of the mightiest and purest streams; the soil congenial to the loftiest 
trees, the cedar and the pine; the places most secure to helpless inno- 
cence, in consequence of their distance from the haunts of men; the 
spots which are the first and last to enjoy the golden light of day, and 
which afford the farthest prospect over this world of woe.t During the 
ages of faith in reference to the holy inclosures on their summits, it 
might with truth be said, that the mountains distilled sweetness, and the 
hills flowed with milk and honey; for there was heard at many seasons 
of every year a voice of the multitude on the mountains, as if of a peo- 
ple gathering, a voice of the sound of kings and of the nations assem- 
bling. ‘Then used each man to say joyfully to his neighbour, «Come, 
and let us ascend to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the 
God of Jacob; he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths ; 
because a law hath gone forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord 
from Jerusalem.”’ 

The blessed John of the Cross distinguishes three kinds of holy pla- 
ces, that is, places where God is accustomed to excite the will to devo- 
tion. ‘The first are certain spots rendered agreeable by the extensive- 
ness and variety of the view, by the verdure of trees and plants, by sol- 
itude and silence. The end in employing such places is to elevate 
the heart to God. Almost every Christian city, and even village, was 
adorned and consoled by some place of this kind, on which a Calvary 
was erected, where devout persons went at all times to pray; and 
where at intervals, as on the festivals of the holy cross in May and in 
September, the whole population would assemble then in peaceful pil- 
grimage, to assist at the divine offices cclebrated in an adjoining chapel, 


* Tristan, tom. v. 333. ¢ Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. 

+ Le Sacré Mont d’Olivet ou le Paradis de la Religion du Seraphique Pere St. 
Francais, p. 10. 

Vou. IL.—32 B2 


18 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and to hear some man of God discourse upon the love of Jesus. Such 
was the Mont Valerien near the city of Paris, where hermits had resided 
since the eleventh century, whose sweet solitude even kings protected, 
for in the year 1683 there was a royal decree frobidding any one to 
keep a hostelerie upon that mountain nearer than the village of Suréne.* 
In the house of the missionaries on the summit, it was the custom to 
admit laymen who desired to make retreats. ‘The Cardinal de Noailles 
came there every year for that purpose, and the Cardinal Boromeo used 
in like manner to retire to the Calvary on Monte Varale, where were 
represented the mysteries of the Passion. Here were fields of roses, 
which embalmed the air with their sweet fragrance; and when the mul- 
titude assembled, such peace and joy beamed from every countenance, 
that one might have thought that the reign of universal order was alrea- 
dy come. One of the first acts of the sophists who wrought the last 
revolution, was to throw down the crosses and desecrate the sanctuary, 
that all men might know them by their fruits. The second kind, con- 
tinues the blessed Friar, are particular places, whether solitary or not, 
in which God is known to have had extraordinary intercourse with just 
men, thither sending his winged messengers on errands of supernal 
grace, so that these persons continue ever after attached to them, though 
it is not the place but the soul which draws down the grace of God. 
Thus Abraham raised an altar on the spot where God had appeared to 
him; and in passing by it on his return from Egypt, he again worship- 
ped there; and Jacob also made an altar of stone in the place where the 
Lord appeared to him. Such are the famous church of the Portiuncula 
and the seraphic mountain of Alvernia in Italy, exhibiting those won- 
drously split rocks, which a pious tradition ascribes to the earthquake 
at the death of Christ, and clothed with that deep and solemn wood, 
which so often beheld the secret wanderings and heard the infinite sighs 
of the fervent servants of God, Francis and Anthony, where the former, 
while praying at day-break on its rocky side, received the stigmata which 
his limbs two years did carry. Such, too, is that high mountain called 
Cruachan Ailge, in Ireland, so memorable for having been the place 
where St. Patrick spent a Lent in great abstinence and solitary medita- 
tion. The places where hermits had lived or where holy men used to 
preach, were often called ever afterwards the holy place. ‘Thus, in the 
diocese of Paris, there is a lieu-saint, so called from St. Quentin having 
lived there a recluse. ‘There is another lieu-saint in the diocese of Cou- 
tances near Valogne, where holy solitaries lived under the first race of 
kings. In Germany there is Heiligenstad, where Dagobert I. had a 
vision of saints.t That tower of Ader, where St. Jerome says the an- 
gel appeared to the shepherds that were watching their flocks by night 
would be a place of the same order. The third kind of places are those 
which God has destined, by an especial choice, for his service. Such 
were Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb.t The Carmelite friar Nicholas, 
who describes his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the year 1487, visited these 
holy mountains, to which he could travel only by night, through the 
midst of horrible deserts. Arriving at length within view of the con- 


* Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. vii. 129. + Lebeuf, tom. xiii. 188. 
+ B. John of the Cross, ascent of Mount Carmel, lib. iii. c. 41. 


AGES OF FAITH. 19 


vent of St. Catharine, he says that every one wept for joy. The monks 
received them with great charity, but the pilgrims were only disposed 
for prayer. After mass matins were sung, after which every one retired 
to rest for the remainder of the day. The pilgrims disposed themselves 
to visit the holy places of the mountain by confession and devout prayer. 
On Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb, he says, there were many holy cha- 
pels to honour the spots which are consecrated by events of the sacred 
history. He describes his ascent and the views from the summit, and 
no book of modern travels will convey the same impression of reality as 
this holy man’s simple relation. In few words he makes you behold 
the two mountains of Sinai and Horeb, and the holy places and the dread- 
ful wilderness, and the Red Sea with its desert islands and the horrible 
mountains of ‘Thebaid.* The moderns have lost the idea of holy pla- 
ces, and are often disposed to condemn and ridicule those who have re- 
tained it. Had they been with Moses upon Horeb, they would have 
imagined some figure that would dispense their making bare the feet. 
Let us pause a moment, therefore, to hear the sentiments of men in ages 
of faith respecting the origin and influence of that idea. In the first 
place, they needed not the discourse of Milton to teach them as a gene- 
ral precept, 
—— “that God attributes to place 


No sanctity, if none be thither brought 
By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.’’} 


This was a Catholic maxim, which he had gathered, as many things 
besides, from the writings of the olden time. St. Bernard had said, 
‘‘ Let no one flatter or congratulate himself respecting a place, because 
it is said, this place is holy, non enim locus homines, sed homines lo- 
cum sanctificant ;’’ to which words the pilgrim brother Nicholas alludes, 
saying, ‘‘ Le canon dit, ’homme fait le sainct lieu, et non le lieu fait la 
Saincte personne.”’{ ‘* Neither do holy places,’’ says Walafried Strabo, 
abbot of Fulda, ‘* profit those who lay aside holiness, nor do horrid pla- 
ces injure those who are protected by the grace of God. The angels 
fell in heaven, whereas Moses was preserved in the waters, Daniel 
among the lions, and the three children in the fire.’’|| St. Peter the 
venerable, abbot of Cluni, writing to the monks of Mount Thabor, ex- 
horting them to be especially devout and fervent, from the consideration, 
not only of their being Christians and monks, but also because they in- 
habit a holy place, desires them to remember well that a holy place can 
never save them.§ ‘‘ As for these places of pilgrimage, and the extra- 
ordinary graces which are vouchsafed to those who visit them,”’ says 
the blessed John of the Cross, ‘ the reason of their existence is to give 
occasion for more ardent fervour and opportunity for men to awaken 
their piety. It is for this end that miracles are wrought in those places 
where the faithful assemble to offer up their vows to heaven, in sight 
of the sacred images. Their faith in God, their confidence in his good- 
ness, their singular devotion for the saints whom these celebrated ima- 
ges represent, and their continual prayers, sustained by the intercession 


* Le grant voyage de Hierusalem, Paris, 1517. t Paradise Lost, xi. 
+ Le grant voyage a Hierusalem, f. eviii. | De rebus Ecclesiasticis, cap. xiii. 
§ Epist. lib, ii, 44. 


20 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of the blessed, obtain from God these extraordinary prodigies, of which 
the whole glory returns to the Creator. We find that these operations 
generally occur in places where the painting or image is some simple 
and common work, and where the place itself is retired and solitary, 
far from the haunts of men, where simplicity and faith alone are favour- 
ed, where the length and difficulty of the journey may prove the devo- 
tion of the heart, and where the solitude of the place itself may deliver 
the pilgrims from the noise of the world, and favour their devotion, as 
when our Lord withdrew to deserts and to mountains for his prayer.’’* 
The zeal with which such places were visited by the early Christians 
may be learned from St. Augustin, where he says, ‘‘ Brethren, recall to 
mind how, on any festival of the martyrs, when any holy place is nam- 
ed for any certain day, the crowds flow in together, to celebrate the so- 
lemnity. How they excite one another; how they encourage one an- 
other, and say, Let us go; let us go; and when it is asked whither ? 
they reply to such a place, to such a holy place: they talk together, 
and as if catching fire from one another, they kindle into one flame, 
which impels them to that holy place which saintly meditation points 
out to them. Such is the holy love which makes men visit temporal 
places of sanctity. What then ought to be their ardour in hastening to 
heaven.’’t If men would only observe what passes within themselves 
with regard to human things, they might learn to understand the princi- 
ple of devotion to holy places, with regard to God: for instance, they 
esteem one chapter of a favourite book more highly than the rest, be- 
cause they remember having read it in presence of a friend who is now 
absent. If they have executed any work of art while conversing with 
him, they prize it more than all others on that account. What intense 
and subtle feeling connects itself with the most trifling circumstance 
which has any relation to the earthly affections of the heart! and so it 
is with those who love God in his saints. Their habits, the staff they 
used to bear, the chamber they used to inhabit, the rock on which they 
used to pray, the well from which they drank, the sepulchre where they 
repose, become precious and venerable and holy. 

From St. Gregory of Tours we can learn the usual mode in which 
such places were visited, for he says, ‘‘ On one occasion, as I was going 
about the city of Lyons to visit the holy places, the man who walked 
before us coming to the crypt of the blessed Helius, invited us to pray, 
saying, because a great priest rests in this place.’’{ Cold ungrateful 
men may argue or contemn, but reason will admit the wisdom of a de- 
votion which is founded in the deepest principles of our nature. Ah, 
why are men so undoubting and resolute to admit an excuse for omitting 
the memory of God; why so backward and forbidding, so full of scep- 
ticism and difficulties, when an occasion is offered of invoking him ? 
Never can I lose the remembrance of that evening of sweet peace, when 
with the holy monks of Vallombrosa I went the round of all their bles- 
sed spots, sanctified by the wondrous life and blissful death of the an- 
cient eremites of. that cloister, when the narrow cell which had shelter- 
ed one, the rocky bed on which another had expired, and every other 


* Ascent of Mount Carmel, lib. iii. ¢. 35. + Tractat. in Ps. cxxi. 
+ De gloria Confessorum, 62. 


AGES OF FAITH. 21 


revered memorial was visited with solemn litanee or hymn to Christ’s 
blessed mother, or offering of glory for everlasting to the triune God. 
Thus did we ascend that mount of Paradise, when each step they invit- 
ed me, thoughtless and obdurate, to turn from nature unto nature’s God. 
To Vallombrosa one repairs with recollections that centre upon the po- 
esy of Milton, and from it one returns with a mind refreshed, exalted, 
enraptured with a sense of that supernal music which can be known 
fully but where day endless shines. By the erection of stations in some 
retired spot, in the neighbourhood of every town, the church proposed 
to multiply places which, by the representation of our blessed Saviour’s 
sufferings, might move the hearts of her children to greater fervour, and 
serve as a perpetual instruction to the ignorant: and in connection with 
the great historical facts and awful mysteries of religion, these affecting 
memorials of piety contributed to the riches which the earth was found 
to yield to the meek in ages of faith. What was the idea of their in- 
stitution? at Jerusalem was their original. ‘There tradition has pre- 
served even many circumstances of the passion, which are not related 
in the Gospel. ‘The spot is shown where Mary met Jesus bearing the 
cross ; driven away by the guards, she took another road, and was found 
again further on, following the Saviour. It is Chateaubriand who thus 
speaks: ‘‘ Faith is not opposed to these traditions, which show to what 
a degree this wondrous and sublime history has been engraven on the 
memory of men. Eighteen centuries passed over, persecutions without 
end, unceasing revolutions, ruins piled up and still ever increasing, have 
not been able to efface or conceal the trace of this divine mother weep- 
ing for her son!’? ‘The Church was well aware of the impressions felt 
by those who visited these stations, and with her constant tender solici- 
tude she endeavoured to provide the same for all her children. Every 
town and village, therefore, furnished places where, in some degree, 
they might be experienced by those who had a devout heart and sincere 
contrition. ‘There, after the business of the day was over, when the 
angelus had tolled and the hour came when nature makes that awful 
pause and inclines the soul to meditation, the pious youth or holy ma- 
tron would steal softly from the crowd and repair thither, to shed the 
sweet undiscovered tear on the Mount of Olives, on the spot where Pi- 
late cried Ecce Homo! on the place where our Saviour sank under the 
cross, on that where he said unto the women, Weep not for me, and so 
on the rest. At Rome these were represented in the Colosseum, with- 
in that very inclosure where such multitudes of martyrs had followed 
Christ to the bitterness of his passion. On certain days the clergy, fol- 
lowed by a devout multitude, visited these places in procession, sung 
the litanee, recited prayers, and delivered a short instruction. Nor was 
this all. Innumerable crosses of stone or wood were erected by the 
public ways, in the heart of forests and amidst the wildest scenes of na- 
ture, on bridges, which heard amidst the eternal murmur of the streams, 
the chaunt of nocturns in the night, and on the craggy summit of islands, 
that lay far in the melancholy sea; that no place might be left without 
the symbol of human redemption, and the memorial of the passion of 
Jesus. Descending from the mountain of St. Bernard, under that fort 
of Bard, in a spot which seems made by Nature herself for the destruc- 
tion of an army, and where modern art now vies with her in appalling 


22 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


frowns, with what delightful surprise does one discover the peaceful im- 
ages of heaven’s mercy, the Madonna and the cross!’ Time was when 
England too possessed them. In the vast fens surrounding Crowland, 
we read of there being immense crosses placed, as on the boundaries 
between Holland and Kesteven, Alderlound and Goggisland.* In the 
ancient groves, too, which never heard the woodman’s stroke, amidst 
the giant trunks’ projecting withered arms, like that forest which clothes 
the shore of Bolsena’s Lake, through which the pilgrim mounts to Mon- 
tefiascone, you would find the cross to sanctify the melancholy shade. 
Thus we read in the books of chivalrous fable, how the knight errants 
used to hang up their shields by the stone crosses in the forests. In 
poetry, as in nature, we sometimes come upon them suddenly with glad 
surprise. How impressive is that instance, amidst a battle-scene, in the 
lay of Marmion, when Clare looks round for water to slake his dying 
thirst as he lay wounded on the wild heath, near a stone cross: 
“Where shall she turn? Behold her mark 
A little fountain-cell, 
Where water, clear as diamond spark, 
In a stone basin fell ; 
Above, some half-worn letters say, 
Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray 
For the poor soul of Sybil Gray, 
Who built this cross and well.” 
Frequently, too, these were memorials also of historical events, to 
which piety gave an immortal remembrance, as at Ravenna, near which 
a simple Greek cross indicates the spot where formerly stood the superb 
basilica of St. Lorenzo, founded in the year 396, and destroyed in the 
sixteenth century. King Philip, carrying the body of St. Louis, his 
father, from Paris to the abbey of St. Denis, wherever he halted to re- 
pose crosses were erected on the spot, which stood till the revolution. 
On the similar occasion of the body of queen Eleanor, wife of Edward 
I., being conducted from the north to Westminster, those beautiful 
crosses were erected, of which the ruins may still be seen at Waltham 
and other places. At Rievaulx Abbey, when the body of St. Wilfred 
had been washed, and the water then poured out upon the earth, a 
wooden cross was erected on the spot. 

The first amongst the Christians who opposed the worship of the 
cross was Claudius, a Spaniard, in the ninth century, and in the same 
age the Paulicians, who appeared in the East. The Wickliffites called 
the images of the cross putrid trunks, less estimable than the trees of 
the wood, for the latter, said they, had life, but these were dead, a pas- 
sage which shows how profoundly these first reformers could philoso- 
phize. The succeeding heretics were animated with a most invincible 
hatred against the crosses, so that they disappeared every where before 
them, while statues of kings, in the heathen style, were erected in their 
stead, as at Charing Cross, the demolition of which was effected amidst 
loud cheers from an immense multitude. Yet such was the inconsis- 
tency of these men, who mistrusted or condemned the impression pro- 
duced by the representation of the cross of Christ, that some of them 
were heard to say, that they could never hear the loud solitary whistle 


* Hist. Croylandensis in Rerum Anglic. Script. tom. i. and Ingulphi Hist. p. 39. 


AGES OF FAITH. 23 


of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild cadence of a troop of gray 
plover in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul, like 
the enthusiasm of devotion. Our forefathers, too, may have known 
nothing, or next to nothing, of the structure of their souls, but yet they 
could give a reasonable account for their attaching more importance to 
the impressions which they felt at the sight of a cross, than to any of 
the seeming caprices of their nature. ‘‘'The mere sight of a crucifix is 
never useless to the soul,’’ says Louis of Blois, speaking of the spiritual 
ascetic.* ‘A Christian of orthodox faith,”’ he says again, ‘‘can never 
behold the image of a crucified Redeemer, without great utility.’’t 
‘The moderns are not unwilling to kiss the books of the Gospels be- 
fore a judge,”’ observes Bossuet, ‘‘and what is the cross but the whole 
Gospels in one sign and character contracted? What is the cross, un- 
less the whole science of Jesus Christ crucified? Why then should we 
not kiss that and bow the knee to it?’ Does not the very instinctive 
aversion with which it is regarded by all enemies to Christianity prove 
it to be holy? What other inference can be drawn from those late hor- 
rors in Gallic land, where the symbol of salvation was overthrown 
with such demoniacal ferocity, and replaced by the symbol of the revo- 
lution, by that of Atheism? The moral influence of the Christian sym- 
bol was so clearly seen by its enemies, that among the articles of capit- 
ulation to be observed by the Christians on the fall of Jerusalem, the 
Turks stipulated that they should place no crosses upon their churches, 
nor bear them or the Gospels about in procession, and that their bells 
should not be tolled, though they might be allowed to observe their re- 
ligious rites in all the churches already built. Elsewhere, indeed, the 
same enactments, with the exception of the latter indulgence, were en- 
forced by men who continued to profess a belief in Christianity; but 
the results proved the acuteness of the Sarassin policy, and the folly of 
those who, with different intentions, imitated it. By degrees, the race 
which had lost faith, lost also the memory of Christianity; its thoughts 
were wholly engrossed with business or political debates, or with delu- 
sive phantoms of sense; if it heard mention of God having come down 
on earth, chosen apostles, and sent them to found a religion, the impres- 
sions excited were not different from those with which it read the histo- 
ry of Romulus or Alexander. Now one can easily understand why, in 
a Catholic country, such a godless crew should feel startled and disquiet- 
ed; for there men may indeed fall victims to passion, may aspire to rob 
or remain tangled in a net of sensual delight, but never for a single day 
can they forget the great and awful facts of the Christian dispensation. 
Faith has raised too many memorials of its history and of its mysteries 
for their minds, to be ever reduced to a state of nature or mere animal 
perception, that is left without either the consolations or the terrors of 
religion. 

Thus, then, during ages of faith, was nature enjoyed in connection 
with religion, by those to whom meekness imparted the privileges of 
simplicity. ‘Thus was the exterior and interior life brought into perfect 
harmony, so as to produce that expansion of the heart which is the real 
cause that makes a Catholic country so delightful to men of good will; 


* Institutio Spiritual. cap. vi. ¢ Enchirid. Parvulorum, lib. i. doc. xii. append. 


24 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


for so sweet is it to them, that ‘‘they whose verse of yore the golden 
age recorded, and its bliss on the Parnassian mountain,’? may be 
thought to have foreseen itin a dream. ‘The earth was adorned with 
beauteous monuments, and the luminous air itself seemed to diffuse 
sweet harmony, not alone those wild and melancholy strains of which 
the poet speaks as heard in Scottish land, rising from the bands of busy 
harvest, 
“ When falls before the mountaineer, 
On lowland plains, the ripen’d ear ;”” 

but oftener, as in the neighbourhood of Rome, when peasants in the 
evening return from the vintage, some litanee or sacred hymn, for even 
festive songs, like those of that devout people, had in some manner still 
a religious burden. ‘The author of the Martyrs ascribes this custom of 
pious ejaculations and responses by the rustic labourers to the first 
Christians, and traces it to the days of Ruth.* In the time of St. Jerome, 
the labourers in Palestine conducting their carts, and the husbandmen in 
dressing their vines, used to refresh their spirits with the chaunt of Al- 
leluia, and the presence of Christian youth was recognised by hearing 
the shepherds and peasants singing canticles of devotion by the side of 
their flocks, a scene which then recalled the primitive innocence of the 
pastoral life of the ancient patriarchs. The old French kings endeay- 
oured to promote this custom by their paternal ordinances, which said, 
‘‘Let all sing on the Sabbath, going to vespers, or to matins, or to 
mass, chaunting Kyrie Eleison; and in like manner let the herdsmen 
of cattle sing as they go into the fields or return to the house, ut omnes 
eos veraciter Christianos et devotos esse cognoscant.”’t Wandering 
among the olive groves of Fiesole, I have heard children in cottages 
chaunting the Kyrie Eleison, while mothers at the doors handled the 
distaff and the flax. The very reverence with which the humble friar 
and the village pastor were regarded was a source of social and serene 
enjoyment to the people among whom they walked. ‘Their sweet and 
holy countenances were felt as a benediction, in the same manner as 
the entrance of the unblessed feet of modern sophists is always felt as 
an interruption to joy, though these are the men who have the confi- 
dence to speak of applying their moral energies to the gradual extinction 
of Catholicism, and the consequent increase of social enjoyment, ‘as 
if,’ cries an excellent writer, ‘‘men who are themselves incapable of 
social enjoyment, their principles being a condensation of selfishness, 
and repugnant to all sociability, their rudeness, and even ferocity of 
look and manner, being sufficient to enable travellers to recognise them 
in any place, could increase or secure social enjoyment in others.”’? In 
short, the meek felt themselves in every object that struck their senses, 
and at every hour of their existence, endowed with hidden riches, and 
in possession of an innocent and a happy earth. If they had lived more 
days than Abraham, they would not have had time to use this long se- 
ries of sanctified pleasures and natural enjoyments which life distilled, 
drop by drop, sweetly, and secretly, upon their lips. ‘Thus ‘through 
a wilderness of primy sweets that never fade, they walked in thought- 
fulness, and vet expectant of beatitude more high.”’ 


* Lib. ii. + Capit. Carol. mag. 202. lib. vi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 25 


So far we have considered the blessedness of the meek in relation to 
the material advantages which could be drawn from the possession of 
the earth. It remains to take a brief view of the more spiritual and in- 
terior riches which were attached to that inheritance, and the attempt to 
show in what manner it became subservient to the extension of intel- 
lectual good will be the object of our next disputation. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Ir is the object of our enterprise to discover in what manner the 
meek, in ages of faith, availed themselves of the intellectual treasures 
which the earth is capable of yielding, and for this purpose we must di- 
rect our thoughts to those spiritual and interior riches which are derived 
from poetry, from learning, and from friendship, for it is clear that, in 
one sense, these rise to mortals from the earth, and are an essential part 
of its inheritance. Of themselves, too plainly imperfect, and liable, as 
experience proves, to the most lamentable abuse, we shall find that they 
were ennobled, perfected, and secured by an alliance with the principles 
of faith, which gave purity to their object and stability to their posses- 
sion. Poetry was perhaps one of the original gifts which the bountiful 
Creator attached to the present condition of man’s life, in order to ena- 
ble him to sustain the wretchedness of his exile. Philosophers observe 
that the sensible world, being inferior in dignity to the rational soul, 
poesy seems to grant that to human nature which history denies, sup- 
plying shadows in place of substance to the mind; and Lord Bacon says 
that if any one should examine attentively, a firm argument is derived 
from poesy, that there is a more illustrious and perfect order of things 
than can in any manner be found in Nature herself after the fall; there- 
fore, as realities cannot satisfy the mind, poesy feigns actions more he- 
roic; it corrects history, and therefore conferreth not only to delecta- 
tion but to magnanimity.* Pindar had remarked, that truly there are 
many things wonderful, and that legends adorned with varied fables lead 
away the minds of mortals more than a true discourse.t Yet if atten- 
tion be paid to the original source of all poetic fable, there is deeper 
penetration shown by Homer, where he invokes the muses as divinities 
who alone know all things, and then adds, but we hear only rumours 
and know nothing: 


a S > 5 
& yess St xartoc obov dxovomeey ovdé tt iducey.” 


‘¢Fancy itself,” as Frederick Schlegel observes, ‘Sis one of the essen- 
tial groundworks of consciousness. It is in its foundation nothing but 
memory; and what we commonly call fancy is in fact only a delirium 


* De Augment. Scientie, lib. ii. c, 13. { Olymp. i. $I. ii. 465. 
Vor. [1.—4 C 


26 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of the memory.’”’* ‘True art and all higher poetry are the beautifully 
adorned summit, the promising blossom, nay, the very flower of hope.t 
‘And man,” as he says, ‘from childhood to youth, from youth to man- 
hood, from manhood to death, is, above all other creatures, a being of 
hope.”’{ ‘The same view is taken by Huet, in accounting for the dis- 
position of men to love romance: ‘It arises,’’ he says, ‘from the fa- 
culties of the human soul, which, being too vast in capacity to be satis- 
fied with any present object, seeks gratification from the past and the 
future, from truth and fiction.’’|| St. Augustin had said that those fic- 
tions which are significative and emblematical are not falsehoods, but 
figures of truth, of which some of the wisest and most holy men have | 
availed themselves, and we find the same doctrine well explained and 
diffused in the middle ages, in proof of which we may witness the 
words of John of Salisbury, where he says that ‘the lies of the poets 
serve truth;’’§ and those of Christine de Pisan, where she says, ‘al- 
though in general the name of poesy be taken for some fiction, and 
thouvh it is a common saying, Les poétes mentent de moult de choses, 
yet the end of poetry is truth, to advance which these feigned images 
are formed, enveloping the real and occult sense.’’** Indeed, such has 
been the universal judgment of mankind. ‘The Persians, who had such 
a reverence for truth, and who regarded every species of lie with such 
horror, were nevertheless peculiarly fond of works of ingenious fiction, 
and many of their books of instruction for youth were in the form of 
romances. ‘Their legislator Zoroaster employed fabulous adventures 
for this object. Strabo says that their masters of youth gave their pre- 
cepts of morality in tales and fictions. Seneca observes that the an- 
cient Romans made frequent use of fabulous adventures for the purposes 
of instruction; and Macrobius reckons works of the nature of romances 
among those which administered instruction with delight, In the mid- 
dle ages the title Romant was applied to true histories, as to that of Du 
Guesclin, for it signifies any work which was written in the langue Ro- 
mane; but it was at length applied exclusively to those works which, 
as Huet observes, were true in their details, and false only in their gen- 
eral object, which differed from many of the ancient historians only on 
this account, that they were false in their details, though faithful in 
their general outline. After all, romances in this sense had their origin 
in the beautiful East, and they were allied to those parables which have 
the highest of all sanctions. Huet supposes the Egyptians, Arabians, 
Persians, Indians, and Syrians, to have been the first writers of ro- 
mances, and he shows that the great authors of antiquity, who compos- 
ed romances, were all of oriental origin.tt_ Aristotle, and after him Cor- 
nutus and Priscien, mention the Libyan fables. The Arabs brought 
their romantic poetry into Spain; but their dominion, during the first 
period, so far from assisting, kept down and stifled the genius of that 
people, and by imposing the Arabic tongue, put off the rise of the Span- 
ish literature, so that Italy, Provence, and even Normandy, had their 
poets and writers in the language of their country before Spain had pro- 


* Philosophie der Sprache, 136. t Id. 190. +70. 1 40. 

|| Huet, De l’Origine des Romans. § De Nugis Curialium, lib. ii. cap. 6. 
** Livre des Fais et bonnes Mceurs du sage Roi Charles V. liv. iii. chap. 68. 

TT De lOrigine des Romans, 13. 


AGES OF FAITH. 27 


duced any. A Spanish bishop complains, that while his people can 
write verses in Arabic, they cannot say their prayers in Latin, by 
which he meant the Spanish in its infant state. In the hands, however, 
of the ecclesiastical and chivalrous writers, the object of romance be- 
came, in the middle ages, still more under the influence of idealism and 
allegory. Josaphat, Percival, Arthur, Wigalois, and Tschionatulander, 
were mystical personifications of sanctity and knighthood. According 
to the doctrine of Boethius in his Consolatio Philosophica, the ideal 
was represented as a person, and the Germans are delighted to find, in 
the middle ages, poets of their nation who professedly pursued this 
object, such as Konrad of Wiirzburg, Peter Suchenwirt, Henry Muglin, 
Hadamar von Laber, Hermann of Sachsenheim, and Melchior Pfinzing. 

Nothing is more easy than to collect passages condemning poetry 
from the writings of the holy fathers, and nothing simpler than to ar- 
range and connect them in such a manner as to convey the idea of a 
final and absolute prohibition, when men have taken in hand to write a 
formal treatise against it, or to show the danger of its abuse: but whether 
Religion might avail herself of the assistance of poetry, and include that 
beautiful world in the promise which gave to meekness the possession of 
the earth, was at no time, as the lives and writings of the holy fathers 
prove, made a question virtually in the Christian schools ; while the splen- 
did triumph which the eighth Clement had prepared for Tasso at the cap- 
itol, left a positive and ever-memorable testimony that the love of poetry is 
not incompatible with supreme solicitude for the first and highest good. 
Repeatedly, during the ages of faith, the holy bishops of the Church, 
by their instructions and by their examples, sanctioned its diffusion, and 
allowed men to mix serious things with trifles, and false with true, ‘in 
order,”’ as John of Salisbury says, ‘that all things might be referred 
expressly to the worship of the highest truth.”’* So that, as at the be- 
leaguered city sung by Auschylus, at whose seventh gate royal Apollo 
took his awful stand,t the purified and innocent Muse was permitted to 
appear as the champion on one side of the city of the church, that city 
which is besieged at all times by proud and deluded men. Celebrated 
was the ingenuity evinced by the Christian pastors in the time of Julian, 
when they contrived to elude the decree of that emperor, who sought to 
deprive their youth of the advantages of an acquaintance with the great 
poets of antiquity. The Greek tragedy entitled the Passion of Christ, 
composed of verses taken from Sophocles and Euripides, whose cho- 
russes were converted into Christian hymns, is said to have been formed 
by St. Gregory Nazianzen on this occasion, when the Christians were 
forbidden to study the original classical writings. This tragedy has 
been lately consulted with success, in order to correct the present texts 
of Euripides. Not without surprise will some hear mention of a Ger- 
man nun, Hroswithe, in the eleventh century, who, merely through a 
sense of the beauties of the classical writers, adopted a similar expedi- 
ent, and composed Latin dramatic pieces upon Christian subjects, in a 
style well imitated from that of Terence. Christianity has always had 
its poets, under the white robes of the Apollinares in the first age, as 
under the episcopal mantle of Fenelon after the lapse of eighteen cen- 


* De Nugis Curialium, in lib. vii. Prolog. { Aischyl. Sept. cont. Theb. 


28 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


turies. Ecclesiastical history makes frequent mention of bishops, like 
Sidonius in the fifth age, who cultivated the Muse, and associated it 
with their apostolical labours, not disdaining to hearken sometimes to 
the ancient classic bards, but as Dante, when he followed the souls of 
Statius and Virgil, 


“Listening that speech, which to their thoughts convey’d 
Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy.” * 


St. Cyprian of Carthage, Pope St. Damasus I., Paulinus Bishop of 
Nola, Victorinus, Fortunatus, and Hilary of Poictiers, Prosper of Aqui- 
taine, and St. Avitus, Archbishop of Vienne, are illustrious examples ; 
to which may be added priests not invested with the episcopal char- 
acter, as Tertullian of Carthage, Lactantius Juvencus of Spain, Celius 
Sedulius of Ireland, Arator of Rome, and Claudian Mamertus of Vienne.t 
The subjects chosen by Paulinus are the death of the son of Celsus, the 
turbulent condition of his own times and trust in God, the ancient fes- 
_ tivals of the church, newness of life, and the creation of man. Many 
of the little pieces of St. Fortunatus were addressed to St. Radegonde 
or to St. Agnes. One was ‘‘on some violets,” another ‘‘on some 
flowers which were placed on the altar.” He composed many fine sa- 
cred hymns, among which the Vexilla Regis has been adopted by the 
Church. 'The oldest monument of German literature is an epic poem 
relating the slaughter of Roncevalles composed by a priest Conrad. 
The romances of Barlaam and Josaphat, published in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, by Rudolf of Montfort, had been composed by St. John Damas- 
cenus; it treats of the love of God and the heroism of the martyrs. It 
was greatly admired by the Christians of Egypt, being translated into 
the Coptic tongue. Eustathius, Bishop of 'Thessalonica, about the 
middle of the twelfth century, was said to have composed a romance, 
though it was one unworthy of his genius. ‘The Count of Stolberg 
might have appealed to the authority of Huet, who also is inclined to 
disbelieve the report of Nicephorus that Heliodorus had been deposed 
by a council for having composed the adventures of 'Theagenes and 
Chariclea, and the latter grounds his argument on the purity and virtue 
of the work itself.t That learned and holy prelate, Camus, Bishop of 
Belley, as well as the great St. Francis de Sales, spoke in terms of high 
admiration of the romance of Astrea. Fenelon may be said to have 
composed both a poem and a romance in the adventures of Telemachus, 
as also Auneas Silvius before succeeding to the apostolic chair, though 
in one of his letters this learned Pope expresses bitter regret for having 
left such a production among his works. Octavien de Saint Gelais, Bish- 
op of Angouleme, was regarded as one of the greatest poets of his time. 
He saw the reigns of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I. He 
gave translations of the Greek and Latin poets, of the whole /Mneid, and 
of many books of the Odyssey, yet, from the tone of some of his early 
poems, perhaps Dante would have found him in the number of those 
who wept. On being invested with the episcopal character, he indeed 
abandoned all former amusements, and gave himself up wholly to the 
study of holy things, and to the service of the church, but still on the 


* Purg. xxil. + Fabricius, Poetarum Vet. Eccles. Opera. 
¢ De P Origine des Romans, 70, 


AGES OF FAITH. 29 


death of King Charles VIII. whose body he followed to St. Denis, he 
testified his regrets in many verses which were afterwards published in 
the Vergier d’Honneur. Our great St. Dunstan was both a poet and 
musician, whose works no purifying flame need have feared, and the 
Scottish minstrel who has sung the Lady of the Lake alludes to the harp 
which erst Saint Modan sway’d.* St. Aldhelm, Bishop of Shireburn, 
cultivated poetry with such success even in his native tongue, that it 
was said no one could equal him in the composition of English verses. 
Eldred mentions a certain poem of his which the common people con- 
tinued to sing; for when this blessed man led a hermit’s life in the 
woods of Malmesbury, he used often to station himself after mass on a 
certain bridge over which the people returned from the town, and there 
he used to stop them, endeavouring to correct and reform those semi- 
barbarous rustics by the melody of his verses. He composed at vari- 
ous times a multitude of poems and other works, and he expressly 
wrote on the rules of versification. ‘To convey an idea of the interest 
which poets in the middle ages could excite among the higher orders of 
the clergy, we need only to refer to that scene painted by Marchangy, 
where he represents some rude warriors relating what had passed during 
their reception in an apartment at Avignon. ‘‘A gentleman of Padua 
entered the hall and spoke a few words to the Cardinal of St. Vitalis, 
who uttered a loud ery, and gave signs of the utmost affliction. ‘This 
cardinal then spoke to those who were near him, and they in their turn 
lamented with hands raised up to heaven. ‘The news was soon known 
to all excepting to us, who, comprehending nothing of this general des- 
olation, were thinking that it must mean at least the sack of Rome, or 
some new schism in Christendom. It was in vain for us to ask the 
cause. Hardly would any one condescend to answer us, as if we were 
not worthy to feel this privileged grief, too delicate to reach hearts 
encased in steel. In the mean time there came in Mathieu Le-Long, 
Archdeacon of Liege, whose hands the cardinal seized, saying, the cel- 
ebrated companion of your studies, whose genius all Europe admires, 
the divine Petrarch, is no more! It is even so, adds the gentleman of 
Padua, for I have just come from assisting at his obsequies; he died in 
his house of Arqua, the 18th of last July. ‘The company soon broke 
up, each retiring to his own home apparently in equal consternation at 
this common loss.’’t If we now repair to the solitude of holy cloisters, 
we shall find the same affectionate converse with the Muse, disproving 
in its effects that maxim of the old Cratinus, that no verses can long 
survive which have been written by water-drinkers.t ‘The saintly re- 
cluses of the middle ages were far from evincing that contempt for po- 
etry and gentle studies which is so loudly professed by those modern 
theologians who are seen welcoming vile political debates, and engaging 
themselves in the vain and odious controversies of men. ‘ For what 
reason I compose this work in verse,’’ says Celius Sedulius, the Irish 
priest in the sixth century, speaking of his great poem, ‘I will briefly 
explain. There are many whom an harmonious style and the songs of 
poets delight to such a degree that they take no interest in any work of 
rhetorical eloquence, neglecting all such studies, and being so fond of 


* II. + Tristan, tom. vi. 101. + Hor. Epist. i, 19. 
c2 


30 MORES CATHOLIC; OR, 


the sweetness of verses that whatever they receive in that way they 
commit to memory. I thought then that the manners of such persons 
ought to be not rejected, but cultivated, in order that every one accord- 
ing to his genius may be procured in a more voluntary manner for 
God.’’* But, independent of the efforts excited by charity, Plato would 
have said, that the monks were poets by profession, and sooth I believe 
if any convertite had proposed to them the question of the Athenian, 
«« Are we to receive tragic poets into our state ?’’ there would have been 
always some father sufficiently imbued with deep philosophy to make 
a reply in words similar to his, and with the smile of saintly brightness: 
‘«‘O reverent stranger, we are ourselves poets and makers of tragedies, 
authors of the best and most beautiful tragedy. ‘The whole of our 
state is but an imitation of the best and most beauteous life, and we say 
that in fact that is the truest tragedy.”’t But in a lower and more ordi- 
nary sense we gladly admit the children of the Muses, among whom 
did not disdain to walk the great St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Colum- 
ban of Ireland, and Jacopone, that saint and poet, monk, mendicant, 
ascetic, and traveller, that worthy predecessor of Dante. Was it nota 
monk of good life, Jolin of the Abbey of Hauteselve, who translated 
into Latin the ancient romance of Dolopathos or the seven sages, the 
French translation of which was addressed by Hebers to the Bishop of 
Meaux? Was it not Guillaume de Guigneville, a monk of Chalis, who 
composed the romance of the three Pilgrimages, that of man while on 
the earth, that of the soul when departed from the body, and that of our 
Lord who comes to visit his people? Did not Adam of St. Victor, that 
holy monk, during his travels in Greece, compose some sacred poems ?t 
And did not Thibaud de Marly, a monk of the Cistercian order in the 
Abbey of Vaux de Sarnay, where he died in the odour of sanctity, in the 
year 1247, write a celebrated romance in verse?§ Bernard of Cluni 
wrote a poem in Latin of three thousand verses on the contempt of the 
world,|| and Mabillon commends the verses of Marc, of Monte Casino, 
the disciple of St. Benedict, which are the only vestiges that remain 
there of the studies of that time.** Who has not heard of Aboon, a 
monk of St. German des Pres, who died in 924, and of his Homeric 
poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans in the year 885? John 
du Pin, a monk of Vaucelles, who was a good theologian, a great phi- 
losopher and naturalist, was also a poet of renown. He employed six- 
teen years in composing his great work, entitled, ‘* Le champ vertueux de 
bonne vie,” having begun it in the year 1324.1 Is it forgotten that the 
first treatise on the art of poetry, which appeared in the French tongue, 
was written by a prior of the abbey of St. Genevieve at Paris ?{} or that 
the oldest Italian poet is the great St. Francis of Assisi? or that the friar 
Guittone of Arezzo is reckoned among the founders of Italian poetry ? 
or that the most ancient poem existing in a vulgar tongue, if we except 
the Niebelungen lay, was composed by the monk Otfrid, of the monas- 


* Sedulii Epist. Fabricius, Poet. Vet. Eccles. Opera. 

{ Plato de Legibus, lib. vii. 

+ Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. 1. ii. c. 5. § Id. tom. vi. 73. 
|| L’ Abbe Massieu, Hist. de la Poesie Francaise, 87. 

** Tractat. de Studiis Monasticis, cap. i1. 

tt Massieu, Hist. de la Poesie Francaise, 212. tt Id. 222. 


AGES OF FAITH. 31 


tery of Weissemburg, who lived about the middle of the ninth century ? 
This is a versified translation of the Gospels. ‘The author was a disci- 
ple of the celebrated Raban Maur, Abbot of Fulda, and he dedicated his 
work to Luitbert, Bishop of Mayence. This monk Otfrid, in the pre- 
face, blames the French of his time for neglecting their own language, 
and complains that no one will write excepting in Latin; his object 
was to impart the advantages of poetry to the people. The historians 
of German poetry will tell you also of a remarkable poem, composed 
by a monk Werner in the twelfth century, of which the subject was the 
life of the blessed Virgin, in which were united: the epic repose with 
the eulogistic transports of revering gratitude.* A poem of great inter- 
est on the same subject was also composed by Philip the Carthusian. 
The courts of princes could bear witness that poetry was cultivated by 
religious men; Helynand was a poet who used to be invited every day 
after dinner to recite his verses before Phillippe-Augustus. The most 
celebrated piece of his composition was a poem on death, which is al- 
lowed to contain passages of great sublimity. After passing his early 
years at court, and in the castles of nobility, he became a monk and re- 
tired to the abbey of Cistercians at Froimont, in the diocese of Beauvais. 
On leaving the world he left also all the spirit, views, and interests of 
the world, but he did not forsake the Muse; he led so holy a life that 
he was regarded as one of the lights of his order. France beheld in 
him a poet who was a saint; he was also a man of profound learning: 
he composed many works in prose, a chronicle, a treatise on the advan- 
tages of a monastic life, and one on the policy of princes, which evinced 
great wisdom and ability. His poems continued to be held in such 
esteem, that Vincent of Beauvais, who wrote under St. Louis, speaking 
of the year 1209, says, ‘* At this time lived Helynand, monk of Froi- 
mont, a man of extraordinary knowledge and virtue, to whom our lan- 
guage is indebted for the poem on death, which is now in the hands of 
every one as a work of great elegance and of acknowledged utility.” 
Will you hear now for what favours the abbot Gutberct, the disciple of 
Bede, writes to his most loving and sweet friend in Christ, Lullus the 
bishop? «Since you have asked for some works of the blessed father 
Bede, I have prepared, with the help of my boys, to the best of our 
power, what I now send you, namely, his books on the man of God, 
Cuthbert, composed in prose and verse. I should willingly have sent 
you more had I been able. But the present winter has been so severe 
in our island with intense frost and dreadful winds, that the fingers of 
our transcribers have been unable to execute more books. If there 
should be any man in your parishes who can make glass vessels, I beg 
that you will induce him to come here as soon as the season becomes 
mild; for we have no one who is acquainted with the art. It would 
delight me also to have a harper who could play upon the harp which 
we call rotta, because I have a harp, but no artist to play upon it. If it 
be not too much, I wish that you would send me such a person. I beg 
that you will not despise my petition, nor turn me into ridicule on ac- 
count of it, and as for the other works of Bede, of blessed memory, I 


* Rosenkranz Geschichte der Deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter, 177. 


32 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


promise you if I live that I will fulfil your desire.”* It may be re- 
marked in conclusion, relative to the monastic poets, that many of their 
legends or short histories of holy persons have been acknowledged to 
possess considerable poetic merit. ‘The German critics speak with 
fondness of the legend of Alexius, by Konrad of Wirzburg, of that of 
the two Johns, by Heinz of Constanz, of the journey of the holy 
Brandan, in old German verse, which was celebrated in the middle 
ages, of the legend of St. Martina, by Hugo of Langenstein, and of that 
of the holy William of Oranse which was sung in the twelfth century 
in the language of the northern Franks, by Guillaume de Bapaume, and 
in German, by Wolfram von Eschenbach. But it was not only men 
separate to the church who possessed the enjoyments of the holy Muse ; 
history records the names of multitudes in every walk of life during the 
middle ages, whose works evince a tender and poetic mind of bound- 
less fecundity, and alive to the noblest and loftiest conceptions. It 
would not be too much to affirm that the people generally were then, 
not as is now supposed, mere animals of clay and spirits gross, but 
poets; and the reason of this phenomenon we shall better understand 
hereafter when we come to speak of the offices and festivals of the 
church. Dante and Petrarch do not stand isolated like beings of an- 
other world in their generation. ‘They possessed but the art of express- 
ing that which they felt in common with their contemporaries, and of 
developing in the language of genius the sweet and profound impres- 
sions which the multitude also experienced from the mysteries of 
faith, and the loveliness of nature. Do we suppose that ordinary men, 
in those ages of whom history takes no note, had not also their visions 
of hell, purgatory, and heaven ? That they had not also their seasons 
when the love of solitude would impel them to fly the city, and go wan- 
dering about the country, in summer seated in the shade on a green 
lawn or reclining on the bank of a river, and when autumn approached 
repairing to the woods, followed by the Muses? That they could not 
taste also how sweet was the pure and serene air, that their eyes would 
not contemplate with joy the stars which shone over them! Socrates 
says, that while Homer lived, he used to be utterly neglected,t but it 
was not so with the poets of the middle ages. When Petrarch came to 
Arezzo, his native town, all the inhabitants went out to meet him, and. 
paid him the same respect and homage that they would have shown to 
aking. Such was the enthusiasm of a goldsmith at Bergamo, named 
Henry Capra, that he renounced his trade to commence the study of 
philosophy and poetry in the steps of Petrarch, whom he persuaded to 
come to his house, where he received him in a style of royal magnifi- 
cence, with such joy and honour, that people feared he would lose his 
senses. 

That noble cavalier, Pandolphe, of the ancient house of Malateste, 
was so delighted with the works of Petrarch, that he sent a painter to 
make his portrait. Rienze at one time owed his preservation, as Pe- 
trarch relates, to this love of poetry : for it being rumoured at Avignon 
that he was a great poet, they thought it a kind of sacrilege to put a man 
to death of so sacred a profession. In another letter, Petrarch describes 
CL eC i a ES eee 


* S. Bonif. Epist. Ixxxix. _ F Plato de Repub. lib. x. 


AGES OF FAITH. 33 


the passion for poetry which prevailed at this time, not in the city of 
Avignon alone, but in all parts; for he says, ‘« Verses rain in upon me 
every day from France, Germany, Greece, and England. Our lawyers 
and physicians will listen to none but Homer and Virgil. What do I 
say? Even labourers, carpenters, and masons, abandon their hammers 
and shovels to lay hold of Apollo and the Muses. ‘The other day a 
father came up to me in tears, and said, ‘See how you treat me who 
have always loved you: you have been the death of my only son.’ I 
was so struck with these words, and the air of the man who spoke them, 
that I remained for some time motionless. At last, recovering myself, 
I replied, that I neither knew him nor his son. ‘It is of little conse- 
quence whether you know him or not,’ replied the old man; ‘he knows 
you too well. I have ruined myself to bring him up to the law; and 
now he tells me he will follow no steps but yours. I am thus disap- 
pointed of all my hopes.’’’? Charles Fontaine, in like manner, used to 
be often lectured by his uncle, Jean du Gué, a lawyer and avocat of the 
parliament of Paris, who endeavoured to prevail upon him to forsake the 
Muses for the bar, saying to hin— 


“Mieux vaut gain que de philosopher 
A gens qui ont leur ménage a conduire ;”’* 


But it is hardly necessary to add, such arguments had little weight with 
youth during these spiritual ages, when even tradesmen devoted them- 
selves to the Muse. The famous Nicolas Flamel, from being at first but 
a simple scrivener in Paris, became a painter, a mathematician, an ar- 
chitect, a chemist, a philosopher, and a poet! What an extraordinary 
state of society was that which existed in Provence, under the sceptre 
of those amiable and poetic princes, who used to exempt their subjects 
from paying subsidies on condition that they could produce amongst 
them a troubadour! t—or that which was seen at the court of Urbino, 
when it was the asylum of the Muses, under the Duke Guidobaldo da 
Montefeltro? Historians relate, that many cities in the middle ages 
were in a peculiar degree favoured by the Muses. The poetic fame of 
Tholouse was inherited in Germany in the fourteenth century by Mainz, 
Strasburg, Colmar, Frankfurt, Wiirzburg, Zwickau, and Prague; in the 
fifteenth by Niirnberg and Augsburg; and in the sixteenth by Regens- 
burg, Ulm, Munich, Steiermark, Breslau, and Dantzic. But generally 
speaking, as was before observed, the multitude, from which a great part 
of poetry springs, and to which, in one sense, it must return to be judg- 
ed, was then inclined to receive poetic inspiration. ‘The Muses would 
not then have separated their admirer from the people, according to the 
expression of the Roman poet; +t for ordinary life was then poetical, so 
that the personal impressions and recollections of men corresponded 
with the beautiful creations of poesy. The poets of these ages, like 
Guillaume de Lorris, frequently trace the origin of their works to some 
dream which they really had experienced while sleeping upon some 
sweet violet bank of a clear river in the season of spring, or to some 
ride by night in the midst of a tempest over a moor, or to some lonely 
watch near the battlements on narrow wall, marking below the sudden 


* Gouget, tom. xi. 118. + Tristan, tom. vi. 233. + Hor. Car. i. 1. 
Vor. I.—5 


34 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


hastening of the swine, who snatch up straw in foresight of a storm, 
while the distant howl of wolves rises over the surrounding forest. It 
was not strange that youths who had swam by night in Menai’s straits, 
when ‘the livid sparkles, those lightnings on the wave, crested the bro- 
ken tides,’’ should afterwards have had a wild romantic dream, which, 
with little effort, might employ the genius of a poet. Life admitted 
then of high natural enjoyments, and consequently men were formed to 
poetry. ‘They were poets precisely because they lived simply and had 
an unsophisticated heart. It is a false, and not a Christian civilization, 
that kills the imagination and banishes the Muse from all converse with 
mankind. 

Moreover, meekness and humility are essential to poetry, for pride is 
incompatible with its joys. The proud are too knowing to become or 
to continue poets. ‘The sensations caused in us by the various beauties 
of literature and art are so fine and delicate, that they perish at the first 
effort of the mind to understand their causes and relations. In general, 
_ pleasure defies analysis, and we are affected exactly in proportion as we 
are ignorant of the manner how. The proud curiosity of the moderns 
has impoverished their imagination. That sensibility, which, in youth, 
extended to all surrounding objects, gradually departs, and the same men, 
who had once so lively a sense of beauty, finish by regarding it with 
indifference. Do not these observations of Arnaud on the style of Pla- 
to, show clearly that meekness conduces to the possession of poetic en- 
joyment?* Now this artificial and perverted state, the result, not of a 
law of nature, but of a formal apostasy, which is substituted for the na- 
tural and renovated order of human life,—this proud curiosity, which 
only condescends to accept the gifts of heaven on condition of submit- 
ting them to an analysis,—did not exist in the ages of which we are at- 
tempting to relate the moral history ; and therefore the assistance and 
the consolations of poetry were possessed in all their fulness. ‘The ve- 
ry names of the streets of cities, as in Paris, bore testimony to the im- 
portance of the harper, who, like Reginald, had inhabited them, and the 
roads through forest wilds were designated by the titles that were cele- 
brated in heroic song.t The poet, or harper, was a welcome visitor in 
the castle or in the cottage—men listened to him, as Plato says, as to 
one who knew many things; and they used him as boys make use of 
aged persons,—loving to hear their sweet tales.| Even amidst the 
cold regions of the North, the people were not all in these ages, as one 
might at present suppose, men like those described by Au%schylus, whose 
lively blood dull draughts of barley wine had clogged.|| ‘These were 
the days when a young Harold bard of brave St. Clair, 

“born where restless seas 
Howl round the storm-swept Orcades: 


Where erst St. Clairs held princely sway 
O’er isle and islet, strait and bay !” 


would come to Roslin’s bowers,— 


* Mem. de l’Acad, des Inscriptions, tom. xxxvii. 

+ In the diocese of Paris there was a road called le Chemin de la Table Ronde; and 
the Rue de la Harpe was Vicus Reginaldi Cithariste. Lebeuf, tom. i. ii. 567. 
, # Plato, Hippias Major. | Suppl. 


AGES OF FAITH. 35 


“Where, by sweet glen and green-wood tree, 
He learn’d a milder minstrelsy ; 
Though something of the northern spell 
Mix’d with the softer numbers well.” 


These were the days when nobles in the castle halls, MuSeow cégrovre wee 
aaasrous tvéroveres, aS Plutarch says, 


“ And noble youths, the strain to hear, 
Forsook the hunting of the deer.” 


Even the pages of princesses were poets then, as was Michael Marot 
when page to Marguerite of France; and noble barons expected a po- 
etic nature in their squires, as when Marmion, sitting under the wide 
chimney arch of the hostel, says, 
“ Fitz-Eustace, know’st thou not some lay 
To speed the lingering night away ? 
We slumber by the fire.” 

King Edward I. had a poet in his camp on his expedition into Scot- 
land, who was a monk, named Baston. He was present in the dreadful 
battle, and describes the death of Sir Giles de Argentine with great 
feeling.— 

‘‘ Nobilis Argenten, pugil inclyte, dulcis Egidi 
Vix scieram mentem cum te succumbere vidi.” 


Who need be told, that even the banquets of these ages were associated 
with a poetic taste? Ta} Arwvieou ydgires, Of which Pindar speaks,* were 
as familiar with our feudal ancestors as with the ancients.t For Chris- 
tianity did not declare war against all Homeric manners. Speaking of 
the Provencal poets, Huet says, that the verses which Homer puts in 
the mouths of Phemius and Demodocus at the courts of Penelope and 
of Alcinous, and those which Virgil makes Iopas sing in the court of 
Dido, may prove the antiquity of the Guay Savoir. Simonides was a 
troubadour in the Castle of Scopas, and Lord of Thessaly ; and Arion 
represented the same character with the princes of Italy. ‘The ancient 
Gauls had also their romantic bards: and we learn from Possidonius, 
as quoted by Atheneus, that Luernus, Prince of Auvergne, holding ple- 
nary courts and open table, presented a sack full of gold to a strange 
poet, who had come to honour the feast. Samson gives his robe to the 
Philistines who explained his enigma; and Pistheterus, in the Birds 
of Aristophanes, advises another to give his tunic to recompense a poet, 
who was come to celebrate the praises of their new city. 

I know not whether, among the ranks of modern society, it would be 
possible to select one to which justly would be applicable the words of 
Plutarch respecting the majority of kings, that they are not Apollos to 
sing, but Bacchuses to drink, ci St roanct obx’ Ardaraves pty ay petvuelowot, Asovucos 
d:, dy ueSurStew;t but I am convinced that these could not be used with 
truth, in reference to the character of the nobility of the middle ages. 
To propose giving instances illustrative of this assertion might well 
alarm a reader who was conversant with the pages of Wharton, Gou- 
get, Renaudot, Millot, Tiraboschi, or any of the great literary historians 


ei W OS 


* Olymp. xiii. ft Plutarch, Quest. Grace. § 36. 
t How to discern true Friends, cap. 16. 


36 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of Europe. But those who have only met with modern descriptions 
of the feudal age, which ascribe to it the character of their own, may 
not be unwilling to hear some evidence in proof that the dignity of a 
noble was not synonymous with a profound contempt and incapacity 
for every thing but the dull realities of a materialized existence. 

In the first age of French poetry there are recorded the names of 
Thibault de Mailly, of the illustrious house of Mailly, in Picardy, at 
that time one of the greatest in France, of Tristan, the chatelain of 
Coucy, and of Blondel, whose faithful attachment to King Richard I. of 
England was so celebrated in romantic annals. The oldest known poet 
of Provence was William IX. Count of Poictiers. In the time of St. 
Louis, nothing was more common than for great nobles and princes to 
be poets. Charles of Anjou, the king’s brother, and afterwards king 
of Naples, Henry of Soissons, who followed him to the crusade, Hen- 
ry, Duke of Brabant, Pierre Mauclere, Count of Brittany, Raoul, Count 
of Soissons, Thibaut, Count of Champagne, and King of Navarre, were 
all celebrated for their love and cultivation of poetry. ‘Thibaut, not con- 
tent with repeating his verses, had them written on the walls of his hall 
at Provins, and in that of Troyes. Henry of Soissons was a worthy 
rival, who followed St. Louis to the East, and was made prisoner at the 
battle of Massoura: so that what Pindar says of the Locrians Epizi- 
phyrians, might with strict justice be applied to the devout Paladins, 
who sought to deliver the Holy Land:— 

——_—_——— Maas é ogiot Kaarnre 

Kak yaaneos 7 Agne,* 
And as at Corinth, where the bit was first joined to the rein of horses, 
and the eagle of Jove displayed upon the two parallel frontispieces of 
temples, and the sweetly-breathing Muse cultivated amidst the dreadful 
spears of heroes,t so to their towers might have been ascribed poesy and 
art, and the triumphs of a saintly warfare. How dear was poetry to 
Charlemagne, who collected all the ancient compositions of the bards! 
In the time of Charles, Duke of Orleans, father of Louis XII. and un- 
cle of Francis I. the greatest seigneurs of France aspired to be poets and 
men of learning; and as Gouget says, the majority of them were wri- 
ters. The Duke of Orleans had a noble genius and an admirable taste 
for poetry. In the manuscript collection of his poems on vellum, which 
the Abbé Gouget consulted, were also the poems of John Duc de Bour- 
bon, of Philippe-le-Bon, Duc de Bourgogne, of René D’ Anjou, of John 
of Lorraine, of the Duc de Nevers, of the Comte de Clermont, and of 
John, Duc d’Alengon. Spain, England, and Italy, could early boast 
of having poets among their highest princes and nobles. 

Illustrious women were inspired by the same enthusiasm. Margue- 
rite of Austria, while regent of Belgium, was the distinguished patron- 
ess of the poets, Jean Moulinet and Jean le Maire. She was herself a 
poet, and also an excellent prose writer: her most considerable work is 
the history of her misfortunes. The highest nobles of Germany fol- 
lowed in the same track, as Henry of Breslau, the Markgraf of Meis- 
sen, Otto of Brandenburg, John of Brabant, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, 
whose Castle of the Frauenburg was renowned in heroic song. 


* Olymp. x. Id. xiii. 


AGES OF FAITH, 37 


The Swabian poets flourished a century later than the Provencal, 
and derived their models from them. Frederic I. composed a short 
history of Provence. Many verses of the Count Rudolf of N iimmburg 
resemble those of Folque of Marseille.* Celebrated in the middle ages 
were the German poets Hartmann von der Aue, who sung the Knights 
of the Round Table, Wernt of Gravenberg, who composed the Wiga- 
lois, Walther of the Vogelweide, Konrad of Wirzburg, Henry Frauen- 
lob Wolfgang Rihn, Marner Miglin, Klinsor, Boppo, Regenbogen, 
Konrad N achtigal, Herman Oertel, and Fritz Zorn, who composed the 
mystic twelve of the Niirnberg school, that were entitled the poets of 
the Wartburg. The wise grand master of the Teutonic order in the 
fourteenth century, Luther of Brunswick, loved poetry and music, and 
was himself a poet, Singing the praise of the Holy Barbara, a saint 
greatly venerated in the order, whose relics had been brought to Kulm 
by the brave Dietrick of Bernheim. His example had such an effect, 
that throughout all the land of Prussia a taste for poetry became gene- 
ral, and poetic paraphrases were made of the Prophet Daniel, and of 
the book of Job. The head convent of the order at Marienburg be- 
came the resort of minstrels and poets, some of whom were also 
knights and priests, who made religion and history the first subjects of 
their muse.t Spain could boast of her poetic princes: Don John the 
First, King of Arragon, was thought by his people to devote too much 
of his time to poetry; he lived always in the company of poets, whom 
he invited from every country.t Martin Franc, in his Champion des 
Dames, says, 

Lisez souvent au Breviaire, 
Du doulx poéte Alain chartier, 


Eslevez toujours le viaire 
A haultes besongnes traictier. 


This is an allusion to the Breviaire des Nobles, of which he says, 
that all knights, 


Le Breviaire de Maistre Alain, 
Doivent lire deux fois le jour. 


In fact, John le Masle, an Angevine, who has written a commentary 
on this poem, says, that in the time of our ancestors it was in such es- 
teem, that all pages and young gentlemen were obliged to learn it by 
heart, and to repeat it every day. The verses of these noble poets are 
often associated with the memory of an affecting and heroic history. 
John Regnier, escuyer and seigneur of Garchy, a counsellor of Philip 
the Good, was a great poet, whose affection for the poor was noticed in 
the last book. He had travelled, as he says, instigated by youthful de- 
sire to see strange countries, and had visited not only Italy and many 
parts of Europe, but also Greece, Turkey, the Holy Land, Armenia, 
and many other kingdoms. On his return he resided at Auxerre; but 
in the wars between Philip and Charles VII. of France, he was seized 
by the latter and imprisoned in a tower at Beauvais, which was oppo- 
site the cathedral. In his prison he composed many poems, one of 


Sri a A ee eh ss Se hh 


* Rosenkranz Geschichte des Deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter, 52, 
T Voigt. Geschichte Preussens, iv. 
+ Diego Savedra Faxarda Christian Prince, tom. i. 62. 


38 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


which was entitled, his fortunes and adventures, which begins with a 
devout prayer to Jesus Christ. The other prisoners, finding out his ta- 
lent, used to entreat him to write poems for them, which he did. One 
is entitled, for John Faulcon, a Norman esquire. Besides this, every 
solemn festival received his offering, that is, a poem on the subject 
which it commemorated. 'The poet, Charles de Clavison, who made 
it his pride that, in an age of heresy, he had always been attached to 
the Catholic religion, was a knight and lieutenant of the King of 
France; he dedicated his poems to his sister, Constance de Bauffre- 
mont, who was abbess of the royal monastery of Saint Menoulx. 

Here then, I conceive, is proof sufficient that the race of men during 
these ages of faith, loved and possessed the consolations of poetry: it 
may be required, however, to state briefly what were the merits of those 
compositions, and their claims to the honour of the Parnassian mount. 
In the first place, the enthusiasm with which they were received ought 
to be a sufficient warrant to us that they fulfilled at least one of the 
essential ends of poetry, which is to move and to exalt. In their rap- 
turous delight the men of these ages cried, ‘the course of the Loire 
swells with pride for having beheld the birth of Jean de Meun upon its 
banks.”? Jean de Meun, thus celebrated as a poet, who finished the 
Romance of the Rose, was a doctor of theology, and with him and 
Guillaume de Lorris, in about the year 1050, under Henry I., the 
French poetry may be said to have commenced.* Such was the admi- 
ration excited by Bernardo Accolti, in the time of Leo X., that when it 
was rumoured he was about to recite his verses the shops used to be 
shut, and the most learned men would crowd to hear him. 

The applause with which the divine comedy of Dante was received 
at the time, is attested by the fact of pulpits having been erected in 
many cities, from which it was expounded. Boccacio was employed 
for that purpose by the Florentine republic: to him succeeded in the 
same office Antonio Padovano and Philip Villani. In Bologna, Benve- 
nuto of Imola, became a public lecturer upon it in the year 1375. In 
Pisa, Francesco of Bartolo da Buti gave a similar course in the year 
1386. The celebrated Giovanbatista Gelli, from being a shoemaker in 
the streets of Florence, became one of the greatest writers of ‘Tuscany, 
through the intense admiration which he conceived for the divine com- 
edy. He used to say, that after being born a Christian, he knew no 
greater happiness than to have been born in the country of Dante. Yet 
when that immortal poem first appeared, there was nothing new or sin- 
gular in its design, which was but a development of the deepest and 
loftiest thoughts that had long moved indistinctly through the minds of 
men, perpetuated by the tradition of many visions, like that related by 
St. Boniface, or that of the knight Tundal in Ireland, or that of Rotch- 
arius the monk, in the time of Charlemagne. But, in general, the char- 
acter of the poetry of the middle ages was religious, in so much that 
when poets produced works of a contrary tone, they were indebted for 
their success to the ingenious fervour, which enabled the people to put a 
devout construction upon them, and by means of a supposed allegorical 
sense to impart to them a holy character. Thus it was maintained, 


* L” Abbe Massieu, Hist. de la Poésie Frangaise, 67. 


AGES OF FAITH. 39 


notwithstanding the indignation and impressive eloquence of Gerson, 
that the Romance of the Rose was all allegorical, and that it contained 
sublime wisdom to correct men, that no attention was to be paid to the 
letter, but that the deep religious sense was to be carefully investigated. 
This rose, so difficult to gather, was wisdom, truth, grace, Christian 
piety, salvation, and, finally, the beatific vision. ‘The Abbé Massieu 
says, that it is impossible not to smile at the simplicity with which all 
this is supposed in the editor’s preface. But still this judgment of its 
contemporaries is interesting; it shows that in these ages men exercised 
as much ingenuity in turning to a religious and virtuous sense what 
might have been really objectionable, as the moderns evince in detecting 
a bad motive for every production. For such ingenuity, indeed, there 
was no occasion in order to discern the religious sense of the greater 
poets of the middle ages, those monarchs of sublimest song, who even 
in their lightest productions, like Shakspeare, evinced the constant 
action of a profound revering spirit. Dante lived at the time of the 
crusades, when all Europe rose against Asia; and yet, as a French 
writer remarks, this immense and awful event was not the subject 
which seized his poetic imagination. There was in the interior of 
Europe something still greater than this sublime episode, that which 
was the cause of this prodigious movement, religion. ‘Three centuries 
later, the beautiful imagination of Tasso, amidst the delights of the 
court of Ferrara, found nothing more admirable to commemorate than 
the crusades. But even in presence of these holy wars, and while their 
memory was fresh, there was something still above them, the church, 
and it was this which he comprised in his mysterious and immortal 
Vision of the Life to Come. The example of St. Avitus, Archbishop 
of Vienne, has been already adduced as that of a pontiff and a poet. 
He was born in the middle of the fifth century, and was a firm suppor- 
ter of the Catholic faith against the Arians. His poems in hexameter 
verse, being six in number, are on the Creation, on Original Sin, on the 
Expulsion from Paradise, on the Deluge, on the passage of the Red 
Sea, and on the Praise of Virginity. The three first are only, as it 
were, cantos of one poem, which may be called the Loss of Paradise, 
and which modern critics acknowledge deserves to be compared with 
that of Milton, It has been thought by some, that his description of 
the garden of Eden is rather superior than inferior to that of the English 
poet; for, though so shortly removed from paganism, he mixes in his 
pictures fewer mythological images, the imitation of antiquity is less 
visible, and the description of the beauties of nature more varied and 
more simple. Like Milton, he has imparted to Satan some traits of his 
original state, and a certain vestige of moral grandeur ; he too has paint- 
ed Satan, at the moment when he enters Paradise and perceives Adam 
and Eve for the first time, 


“ Proh dolor, hoc nobis subitum consurgere plasma, 
Invisumque genus nostra crevisse ruina ? 
Me celsum virtus habuit, nunc ecce neglectus 
Pellor, et angelico limus succedit honori. 
Nec tamen in totum periit, pars magna retentat 
Vim propriam, summaque cluit virtute nocendi. 
Nil differre juvat: jam nunc certamine blando 


40 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Congrediar, dum prima salus, experta nec ullos 
Simplicitas ignara dolos ad tela patebit.” 


It will be easier, he continues, to deceive them while they are alone, 
and before they shall have launched a fruitful posterity into the eternity 
of ages. 
‘«‘Immortale nihil terra prodire sinendum est ; 

Fons generis pereat, capitis defectio membris 

Semen mortis erit. 

Hec mihi dejecto tantum solatia restant: 

Si nequeo clausos iterum conscendere ccelos, 

His quoque claudentur: levius cecidisse putandum est 

Si nova perdatur simili substantia casu. 

Sit comes excidii, subeat consortia pene, 

Et quos prevideo nobiscum dividat ignes. 

Sed ne difficilis fallendi causa putetur, 

Hec monstranda via est, dudum quam sepe cucurri 

In pronum lapsus: que me jactantia celo 

Expulit, hec hominem Paradisi € limine pellat. 

Sic ait, et gemitus vocem clausere dolentis.” 


The departure from Paradise is thus described: 


*‘ His pater exactis, hoedorum pellibus ambos 
Induit, et sancta Paradisi ab sede rejecit. 
Tunc miseri egressum properant, mundumque vacantem 
Intrant, et celeri perlustrant omnia cursu. 
Et quanquam variis herbis ac gramine picta 
Et virides campos, fontesque et flumina monstrat, 
Illis foeda tamen species mundana putatur 
Post, Paradise, tuam, totumque videntibus horror. 
Quzque magis multo paradiso extenditur, illis 
Angustatur humus, strictumque tuentibus orbem 
Omnia lata nimis parent angusta duobus. 
Squallet et ipse dies, caussantur sole sub ipso 
Subductam lucem.” 


The middle ages were familiar with innumerable poems of a high 
moral interest, the fragments of which still charm and astonish us. 
Celebrated with our Anglo-Saxon ancestors was the poem of Beowulf, 
which has been termed a Gothic Iliad. It is so full of noble sentiments 
and poetic imagery, that the learned Dane, Grundtvig, affirms without 
hesitation, that any poet of any age might have been proud to have pro- 
duced such a work. Equally renowned were the song of the ‘Traveller 
in Anglo-Saxon, which is found in the great book at Exeter, bequeath- 
ed to the library of that cathedral by Bishop Leofric, at the close of the 
eleventh century, the triumphal song of the Battle of Brunanburh, and 
also the funeral dirge over Brithnoth, who, during the unhappy reign 
of Ethelred, fell gloriously fighting in the battle of Meldun. 

Genius, indeed, must not be estimated by years, nor is every old 
poem holy or inspiring; but yet what reader of taste at the present day 
does not recur with pure delight to those English poems of the middle 
ages, collected by Percy, Wharton, Ellis, and Scott, which recount the 
heroic deeds, the mourning, and the devout joys of our Catholic ances- 
tors?’ Many of these are by poets whose names have remained un- 
known; and some are said to have been the sole productions of their 
authors, who never made any other, like Tynnichus, the Chalcidian, 
who never composed any poem but that Pon, which Plato says all 


AGES OF FAITH. 41 


used to sing, and which he affirms to be nearly the most beautiful of all 
hymns, the invention of which, having been without art, he therefore 
thinks was justly said to be divine rather than human.* In other works 
I have made use of these ancient Christian poems, in reference to the 
manners of chivalry, 

“ When all of wonderful and wild 

Had rapture for the lonely child.” 

The interest attached to the poetic associations of those days defies the 
cavils of modern criticism. Lord Byron, writing as a reviewer, at- 
tempted to despise the Lay of the Last Minstrel; but while he travelled 
amidst the beautiful scenes of Greece, he could not refrain from calling 
to mind, even at the court of Ali, the description of the castle of Brank- 
some. 

In turning to consider the merit of the early poets of France, we do 
not leave names and works of a domestic interest; for to Englishmen 
these old French poets were in some manner naturalized. Several of 
them had visited England, and were received in illustrious houses, 
where they nourished the genius of many of our own bards, and in- 
structed the youth of noble families; as was the case with Denisot. 
The poesies of Ronsard were a consolation to Mary Stuart, who used 
to read them in the days of her sorrowful captivity, and to find in them 
a relief that could lighten the burden of her chains.t The modern 
French have nothing to despise in these ancient poets, but rather from 
them they might learn simplicity and nature, as well as beauty and force 
of language. Even the Abbé Massieu admits that the old metrical ro- 
mances of France contained sometimes passages approaching the sub- 
lime. Where we least expect it, we find them giving to Christian vir- 
tue a most gracious, venerable, and august character, and striking terror 
into the guilty. Their object is not to represent the varieties of human 
character, but to move the soul with admiration and surprise, and that 
is the end which Aristotle had in view where he affirms that a phi- 
losopher is a lover of fables.t Henry Stephens made a collection of 
sentences from the old French romances, which he said were like Rab- 
bis for the knowledge of many things which belong to the French lan- 
guage. ‘These men, like Guillaume de Lorris, the Ennius of France, 
who began the Romance of the Rose, or like the songster of Limoges 
commemorated by Dante, could not at least be condemned as movers and 
fabricators of new words, an offence so alien from the office of a poet,|| 
though so common with those of our age who have risen to fame. Wil- 
liam of Malmesbury observes, that at the time when the English were 
fond of making use of abstruse and pompous words derived from the 
Greek, their greatest poet St. Aldhelm, Bishop of Shireburn, was remark- 
able for not using exotic words unless very rarely, and when they were 
necessary. In the descriptive poetry of the middle ages, there was not 
that fault of attempting to conquer difficulties which do not repay the 
conqueror, of describing what has no need of being described; objects 
are only named, and the rest is left to the imagination; a word or a 
comparison place them before our eyes. It did not resemble the de- 
i chet AREMD DE aN. A RRO 6 A, a 


* Plato Io. ¢ Gouget, Bibliotheq. Frangaise, tom. xii, 205. 
+ Metaphysie. lib. i. ¢. 2. | Axistoph. Nubes, 1397. 
Vor. I1.—6 D2 


42 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


scriptive poetry of our times, which, as Guizot justly remarks, is scien- 
tific rather than picturesque, and which, by dint of analysing objects 
minutely like an anatomist, makes them appear dissected and decom- 
posed. 

It is easy to perceive, too, in many instances, that this old poesy em- 
bodied the thoughts of men who possessed, as Marot says, ‘‘un gentil 
entendement.’”’ ‘The modern critic Gouget admits, in praise of the poet 
Andrieu du Hecquet, that he reproves vice without sourness, instructs 
without being morose, that he is playful without insolence, that he as- 
sumes a tone of irony without saying a word that is personal, and that 
he praises without flattery. Huet, though he derides the old romantic 
poetry, seems delighted to find that the learned Italians acknowledge 
that they learned it from the provengals. He remarks that the ancient 
romantic poems have served to throw much light upon the history of 
Spain, and to correct the order of its chronology; and though he affirms 
that D’Urfe was the first to elevate romances from barbarism, it is not 
to be doubted but that those old Spanish poems, which he so much 
despised, will survive the fame of that incomparable Astrea to which 
he assigned the palm. In truth, it appears that very high notions were 
entertained during these ages of the nature of poetry, and of the object 
to which its lightest effusions should be directed. The troubadour has 
songs for all kinds of glory, and a tear for all misfortunes. ‘‘ Jongle- 
rie,’’ says a contemporary of St. Louis, ‘‘has been instituted to put the 
good in the way of joy and of honour.’’ Then came the troubadours 
to sing the history of past times, and to excite the brave in relating the 
prowess of the ancients. Half a century afterwards the maintainers 
of the ‘gai savoir,”’ at Toulouse, exhorted poets to fly from sadness, 
and to make noble verses in order that all the world might be the more 
disposed to faith, and to virtue. ‘There was to be nothing childish or 
effeminate in their verse. ‘The advice given to them resembled that of 
Milon to Battos, recommending the choice of an heroic theme. 


TATA Ken Moy TeuvTac ey dAlwp avdgeac deldey" 


But as for these songs about private little domestic affections, it is only 
fit that you sing them to your mother at her toilet. 
MuSiodey +g pared nea’ ebvav deSewuodra'® 

Poetry, said they, is not to be degraded to an art merely administering 
to pleasure. The sages of antiquity had nobler sentiments respecting 
it, one of whom noticing the saying of the majority that the great object 
of poetry and music should be the giving pleasure to the soul, adds, but 
to utter such word is neither endurable in any manner, nor holy, aaaz 
TOUT ey OUTE dveRToY OUTS Orlov TO Wagamray o3,25ut So far I agree to the 
general opinion,”’ says Plato, ‘‘that music should be estimated by the 
delight which it inspires, but it is not by the delight of any one taken 
promiscuously ; but that is the most beautiful muse which delights the 
best men, and those who have been best educated—those who are most 
remarkable for their virtue. ‘Therefore, we maintain that virtue is an 
essential qualification for a judge of such things: for neither in the the- 


* Theocrit. Id. v. + Plato de Legibus, lib. i. 


AGES OF FAITH. 43 


atre ought a true judge to take any notice of the clamour of the multi- 
tude, and of its undisciplined judgment. ‘The practice of determining 
the victory by the clapping of hands corrupted the poets themselves, 
who were induced to consult only the vicious pleasures of the multitude, 
and to look to them for instruction; and it corrupted the pleasure of 
the theatre, for it ought always to have exhibited better manners than 
those of the people, and to have inspired them with a sense of higher 
pleasure than their own.”* What a contrast is there between the judg- 
ment of the ancient sage respecting poetry, and that of our contempora- 
ries! ‘‘That which does not admit justice,” says Socrates, ‘does not 
admit any thing pertaining to the Muses, whatever is unjust is unpoeti- 
cal, “Apousoy 73 3 adixay.”t In their estimate of the importance and object 
of poetry, our ancestors adhered to the spirit of the ancient world, whose 
expressions only needed correction, as where Pindar says of their Apol- 
lo, that he invented the harp and bestows the Muse on whom he wills, 
in order to introduce peaceful law into the heart,{ and as where Hesiod 
says, in a connected strain, || that poets and kings are from the gods, for 
under a legitimate domination, the gifts of the Muses to men never seem 
to emanate from the demon. Nostradamus, in his lives of the Proven- 
cal poets, says, that the monk of the golden isles expressed himself as 
follows, respecting Phanette and Estaphanette, ‘‘‘They excel in poesy, 
having a kind of divine inspiration, ‘laquelle estoit estimée en vray don 
de Dieu.’”? Horace thought that the Iliad of Homer conveyed a better 
moral instruction than the works of the most able philosophers, and cer- 
tainly there is much to learn from the poets of the middle ages, though 
they might have little to expect from a critic like Quintilian, who excus- 
ing himself from deciding between the rival poets Sophocles and Eurip- 
ides adds, that no one need hesitate to aflirm that for all practical purpos- 
es Euripides is by far the more useful.§_ ‘To a judgment formed on loftier 
and less earthly views, the simplicity of their construction, the profound 
piety of their sentiments, the corresponding tone of candour and inno- 
cence which characterize them, attended with some degree of that Homer- 
ic excellence of sublimity in great things, and of propriety in small, for 
government may be learned from the names which they give to wines in 
the fabliaux, cannot but conciliate the affection even of the modern read- 
ers, and perpetuate the renown of books which were alike recommend- 
ed by the consent of the learned as well as by the love of boys. By 
the poets of the middle ages nature was shown in her totality with a 
holy earnestness. The solution for all temporal difficulties was sought 
for in the traditions of spiritual wisdom; and a grand universal view 
was exhibited of the origin and destiny of the human existence, as may 
be witnessed in that remarkable book entitled, «‘ Hortus Deliciarum,” 
composed in the twelfth century, by the ubbess Herrad of Landsberg, 
at St. Odilien, near Strasburg, for the instruction and recreation of her 
sisters. It may be remarked too, that there was nothing forced or still- 
born in the poetry of the middle ages, because it was in accordance with 
the living faith of men. It was Homeric and Virgilian not from a cold 
repetition of Pagan fable and exploded error, but because in accordance 


* De Legibus, lib. ii. t Plato, Phedo, 105. + Pyth. v. 63. 
|| Theogon. § Instit. Orat. x. 1. 


44 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


with the true ideal exposed by Tasso it was employed upon such 
themes as Homer and Virgil would have chosen if they had lived in 
Christian ages.* How well does Mamertus of Vienne direct his com- 
panion— 
*¢ Quanto major ab his cedet tibi gloria ceptis, 

In quibus et linguam exercens, mentem quoque sanctam 

Erudies, laudemque simul vitamque capesses : 

Dumque legis catus et scribis miracula summi 


Vera Dei, propior disces, et carior ipsi 
Esse Deo.” 


But with this principle constantly borne in mind, there was nothing 
to prevent a Christian poet from knowing and mentioning all things. 
It was said, that he should read all books, so that strange works ought 
to be found in his study. 


rs Mais cela n’est offense 
A un Poéte, a qui on doit lascher 
Ia bride Jongue, et rien ne lui cacher, 
Soit d’art magique, négromance, ou caballe, 
Et n’est doctrine escripte, ne verballe, 
Q’un vrai Poéte au chef ne deust avoir, 
Pour faire bien d’escrire son debvoir.”’ 


But whatever might be the multitude of discordant subjects to which 
he alluded there should be never any difficulty in discovering what was 
the poet’s own opinion; and heathen imagery was never to be used as 
a heathen would have applied it. Certainly no poet of the middle ages 
describing Adam and Eve in Paradise, would, like Milton, have com- 
pared them to Jupiter and Juno.t Nor have been obliged to say of 
Eve, 

‘¢ With goddess-like demeanour forth she went.} 


Nor, on the other hand, would he like Milton have described angels 
in language that belonged rather to a heathen. What Villani chiefly 
admires in Dante, is the art by which he reconciled the ancient poets 
with Christianity, and transferred their treasures to illustrate the Christ- 
ian doctrine. In fact, the meek possessed all the intellectual as well 
as material riches of the earth, on the principle that was even known 
to Cicero. ‘‘Recte ejus omnia dicentur, qui scit uti solus omnibus.”’ || 
In the poetry of Dante, Guinicelli, Cavalcanti, and even Petrarch, were 
united philosophy and theology, civil science and poetry, the beautiful 
and the divine, earth and heaven, not from a defective direction of the 
intelligence as the modern sophists affirm,§ but from a thorough initia- 
tion into the mysteries of wisdom, and in accordance with that divine 
fiat which gave to the poor in spirit, and to the meek, both heaven and 
earth. To the ages of faith was unknown that erroneous philosophy 
which first appeared in France during the time of the fourteenth Louis, 
which rendered men scrupulous and afraid, whenever they beheld reli- 
gion attended with the chorus of glorious and beautiful offerings of na- 
ture, and which taught that men could not have fancy as their compan- 
ion along with reason as their guide. The great spiritual writers had 
shown to the exclusive admirers of every thing positive the danger of 


* Dialoghi degl’ Idoli. + Book iv. 500. + Book viii. 59. 
| De Finibus, lib. iii. 22. § Antichita Romantiche d'Italia, ii. 213. 


AGES OF FAITH. 45 


affecting to despise poetry. ‘‘’There are some,” says Taulerus, ‘in 
this life who too quickly bid adieu to images before truth has delivered 
them from their power: and because they deliver themselves they 
scarcely or never can attain to truth.’ ‘The danger arising from the 
power of the imagination when not under the control of reason, that 
Socratic medicine, as Cicero terms it, was indeed never more carefully 
and acutely explained than in the writings of St. Anselm and other 
masters of the school, in which we may find passages exactly parallel 
to that sentence of ieck, that if the feelings and imagination succeed 
in setting up their own supremacy, and in overthrowing reason, then 
each of our higher impulses begets a giant as its son, that will war 
against God. For doubt, wit, unbelief, and scoffing, are not the only 
faculties that fight against God; our imagination, our feelings, our en- 
thusiasm, may do the same, though at first they seem to supply faith 
with so safe and mysterious an asylum.’’ In the blessed John of the 
Cross, the holy Theresa found a monitor to correct those wanderings 
of the imagination which had sometimes caused her so much pain, and 
who enabled her to read from experience that the imagination and the 
understanding, as she says, are not the same thing.* It was not over- 
looked that the possible errors of fancy are as great and their delusions 
as dangerous as those of reason; but neither was it unobserved in those 
times which beheld the fall of an Abailard, that as Frederick Schlegel 
says, there was much more occasion for pointing out the errors incident 
to reason, than for anxiously warning men against the possible abuse of 
fancy.t Upon the whole, therefore, to the philosophic views of the 
ages of faith, the object and employment of poetry were not different 
from those of religion. ‘Tasso says, that the poem of Dante has con- 
templation for its object ;+ and accordingly we find that many of the 
poets then renowned, never began to compose without a formal and de- 
vout invocation of the Almighty.|] Moral and pious reflections in verse 
are mixed up with their histories, as in that celebrated account of the 
life of Louis de la 'Tremouille, by John Bouchet, who proposed as his 
chief object to edify and instruct young knights in their various duties, 
as also in his book “ Séjour des trois nobles Dames,”’ though it was 
written for a particular occasion on the death of Arthur de Goufier, in 
which he says, that his object is to inspire hope and comfort to all per- 
sons in adversity, and to supply brief instruction to teach men how to 
pass the perilous ways of this dispiteous world. Thus again, Claude 
Mermet entitled the collection of his poems, the past time of Claude 
Mermet, of Saint Rambert in Savoy, a poetical work sententious and 
moral, to give profitable instruction to all persons who love virtue. One 
poem of Arthur Desire, is entitled, Les Batailles et Victoires du Cheva- 
lier Céleste contre le Chevalier Terrestre. Raoul de Houdan, of whom 
Huon de Merry says, that no mouth of a Christian ever said things so 
well, composed a work entitled, the Story of the Way of Hell, which 
those follow who go to visit the Lord of Hell, ‘* Plaisant chemin et bon- 
ne voye.”’ As they began with a religious invocation, so they used to fin- 
ish with a devout prayer. Thus concludes John Ruyr one of his poems: 


* The Castle uf the Soul, iv. dwelling. { Philosophie der Sprache, 180. 
t Discorsi sul Poema Enrico, i. || Gouget, Bibliotheque Frangaise, tom. xi. 4. 


46 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


“ Jesus soit mon art studieux, 
Et sa sainte croix mon volume.” 


And the only reward which Martin France requires for his long labours 
in the composition of the Champion des Dames in defence of women, 
to disprove the slanders brought against them in the Romance of the 
Rose, is that they for whom he has composed it, would please to 
pray for him that he might obtain the kingdom of Paradise. Many of 
these poets, too, were themselves men of innocence or of sincerely pen- 
itential lives. Such were Luis of Leon, Gower, Lydgate, Southell, 
T'asso, Dante, and Petrarch. ‘The exquisite Latin poems of Marc Anto- 
nio Flamminio, the friend of Cardinal Pole, are associated with the 
image of the most amiable of men, those of Vida, Bishop of Alba, with 
that of a prelate whose generous disposition had endeared him to the 
poor, those of Sannazzaro with that of a poet comparable to Virgil, 
whose heart was ever bent on heavenly musings. In reply to the heir 
of Petrarch, and on hearing of his death, Boccacio says in his epistle, 
‘After having read your letter, I wept all night for my dear master ; 
not indeed for him; his prayers, his fasts, his life, permit me not to 
doubt his happiness, but I wept for myself.’ Philip Villani relates 
that when Petrarch had grown mature with age, he devoted himself 
without intermission to the study of theology, to the ecclesiastical office, 
to prayers and fasting, and that he lived piously and with simplicity. 
How engaging is the portrait which John Bouchet gives of the poet 
Pierre Riviere, in the verses which he placed on the tomb of * this child 
of Poitiers.”’ 
‘¢ En son jeune ge il fut fort studieux, 
A Dieu devot, aux gens trés-gratieulx, 


Humble et courtois, et de bonne nature, 
Prisé de tous par sa littérature.” 


The poet John le Masle, who expressly sung the moral excellence 
of poets, and their honest freedom, and who was celebrated as the com- 
mentator on the Bréviaire des nobles of Alain Chartier, who had so well 
explained all the virtues and perfections which belong to the nobility 
of a gentleman, could bear this testimony to himself, that he had never 
sought— 

“ Pour estre grand en biens, se mettre en servitude, 
Mais tousjours libre et franc, a mis tout son estude, 
A poursuir la vertu.” 


These are examples and lessons which ought not to be withheld from 
the youth of our times, which is in such danger of losing sight of the 
true ideal of the poet, familiar to men in ages of faith, and of mistaking 
for it the gloomy and delusive phantom of modern genius. ‘The human 
intelligence is, to the ear of faith, like the statue of Memnon, which 
sends forth no harmonious sound, unless it be shone upon by the sun 
of justice. Without those rays to sanctify it, the extraordinary gifts of 
the Creator may astonish and impart a transitory pleasure to wretched 
mortals; though, after all, what is Childe Harold by the side of Dante, 
or Juan compared with the hero of the Jerusalem? but they can never 
yield a complete and unfailing joy. Sad, at all events, and unutterably 
miserable is the attempt of those who look to them for models of imita- 
tion. Modern literature shows how easy it is to catch the licentious- 


AGES OF FAITH. 47 


ness and the gloom, without the freedom and the depth of Byron, the 
frivolity of the Troubadour without his grace and tenderness. As 
Marot says, in allusion to the celebrated but immoral poet Villon,— 


«“ Peu de Villons en bon savoir, 
Trop de Villons pour decevoir.” 


But how feeble is language to express the desolation which awaits 
genius misdirected, and employed to an unholy end, when, as in this 
once gay and licentious Villon, it beholds the early victims of its influ- 
ence prematurely departing, and itself comfortless, self-tormented, and 
alone! Would you hear the mournful testimony of an old poet to the 
inefficacy of his art to sweeten such days: 


«Quand on est jeune, en grand esbattement 
Pour passe-temps et pour contentement, 
C’est un plaisir de sonner la musette ; 
Mais puis aprés, quand l’age et la disette 
Surprennent tost le poéte estonné, 

Alors s’en va son chant mal entonné, 
Diminuant tout petit a petit, 

Car de sonner il pert tout appetit : 
Alors il hait sa musette et sa muse; 
Si elle s’offre, il la jette et refus.” 


St. Fortunatus of Poictiers taught the same lesson in his poem on hu- 
man life: 
“Cum venit extremum, neque Musis carmina prosunt, 
Nec juvat eloquio detinuisse melos. 


I am not ignorant that there is a dark and deplorable side belonging 
to the poetic history of the middle ages; but I reserve my observations 
respecting it to a future place, where I shall speak in general of the 
virtue and vice which distinguished them, for the modern opinions will 
necessarily require an explanation, with respect to the profligacy of the 
licentious poets, when we may be able to place the fact of their exist- 
ence in its just and natural point of view. At the present, let us direct 
our attention for a moment to the theatre, as it was reconstituted in the 
middle ages. All things, say the teachers of divine wisdom, are lawful 
to the pure; but some are so essentially tyrannical, so powerful and 
universal in their tendency to bring men into subjection, to give force to 
the passions, and to enervate those higher powers of the immortal nature 
which are to wage war against the ancient serpent, that Christianity 
has pronounced them to be eternally separate from the sphere of her 
dominion, and from an association with her consoling promises respect- 
ing the enjoyments of a future life. In the form of the ancient world, 
the theatre evidently stood condemned on different grounds, but whether 
it was possible to revive it in any other, so as not to have it included 
among those things, through prudence, and almost necessity, forbidden, 
was a problem which did not admit of an easy solution. Some, in con- 
sidering it, might indeed be influenced by caution and unwillingness to 
sanction any unnecessary restraint which might affect the interests of 
human genius, while others, with equal zeal in behalf of poesy, might 
question whether the interests of intelligence were really so concerned 
in the result as was pretended. Probably it would be very easy to 
have demonstrated that they were not; and, indeed, the experience and 


48 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


testimony of men the most removed from ascetical influence, will go far 
to show that the grandest creations of dramatic poets are not developed 
by a representation on the stage of a theatre. But, however that ques- 
tion be determined, it is certain that genius lost that instrument of 
expression when the belief in the heathen mythology was destroyed. 
From that hour the real dramatic effect, in relation to higher poetry, 
could only be revived on the stage by an alliance between the theatre 
and the Christian faith, an association most difficult, most delicate, 
which it was obvious could not be accomplished until the Church had 
seen many ages and generations of her children, and which if ever 
formed, the least relapse to heathen incredulity, or the scepticism of 
later philosophers, the least relaxation or diminution of simplicity and 
faith, would inevitably and for ever abolish. Such an union, however, 
did take place during the middle ages, and it was at an end when they 
closed, and from thenceforth the genuine children of the muse, they 
who had really drunk deep of the spirit of A%schylus and Sophocles, 
might have regarded with the utmost indifference the controversy re- 
specting dramatic representation between the Church and the self-ima- 
gined poets who sought to identify the interests of human genius with 
the success of their art and the encouragement given to their own pro- 
fession. ‘This brief statement may serve to account for the seeming 
inconsistency in the language of the clergy, who at one time cry out 
with the primitive Christians, What union is possible between the 
Gospel and the muses, between Calvary and the theatre? and at 
another, are heard to invite men to the new plays, which they have 
themselves composed, and in which their students perform characters, 
at the same time that they are condemning actors in ordinary theatres, 
saying, with John of Salisbury, that it is unquestionably a shameful 
thing to be an actor; ‘‘satius enim fuerat otiari quam turpiter occupari,”’ 
declaring that actors and buffoons are excluded from the holy commun- 
ion while they persevere in their malice, thence leaving the patrons 
and favourers of actors and buffoons to collect what awaits themselves, 
if those who do and those who consent are to be punished alike,* and 
adopting as a passage to be for ever read by their successors in their 
office for the vigil of Pentecost, the solemn words of St. Augustin, 
which refer to the theatre in its ordinary state, in that to which it had 
always a tendency to return: ‘these things you must renounce, not in 
word alone, but in deed, and in all the acts of your life. For you are 
caught and discovered by your cunning enemy, when you profess one 
thing and perform another, faithful in name and not holding the faith of 
your promise, at one time entering the church to pour forth prayers, 
and shortly after in the theatres crying out shamelessly with actors. 
Quid tibi cum pompis diaboli quibus renuntiasti?’’f 

The history of the Christian drama, though in many respects inter- 
esting, need not detain us long: its first efforts are witnessed in those 
mysteries, as they were termed, of the nativity, of the passion, of the 
resurrection, and of the acts of the apostles. This forced union, which, 
however, be it remembered, was the only possible device for affording 
to a Christian society a dramatic representation of the highest tone, is 


* De Nugis Curialium, lib. i. c. 8. + Tractat. de Symbol. ad Catechumen. 


AGES OF FAITH. 49 


one of the chief grounds for the accusation of crossness and barbarism 
brought against the ages of faith by modern writers, who thus enable us 
to estimate pretty clearly the consistency of their own faith as Christ- 
ians, and the depth of their sagacity as philosophers. In the villages, 
on the patronal feasts, the mysteries of their respective patrons and of 
other saints, used to be performed when every cone would contribute, 
from the baron who lent his finest tapestry, to the poorest rustic, who 
gave his labour to construct the stage. ‘There were pious spectacles at 
Paris, Metz, Angers, Poictiers, Rouen, Limoges, and in other cities of 
France. At Rheims, in the year 1624, the mysteries of the saints were 
transferred to the theatres of colleges. The personages were not liber- 
tines, adulterers, robbers and gamesters, but angels, apostles, doctors of 
the law, scribes, and tyrants. ‘The people were so familiarized with 
these scenes, that if any actor of the troop were absent, there was al- 
ways some young man ready to take his’ part, and play an angel or a 
martyr. In England, the first trace of dramatic representation is found 
in the history of Matthew Paris, where he relates that Geoffrey, a 
learned Norman, master of the school of the abbey of Dunstable, com- 
posed the play of St. Catharine, which was acted by his scholars in the 
year 1110. Another writer, in 1174, mentions that religious plays 
were acted in London, representing either the miracles wrought by holy 
confessors, or the sufferings of the martyrs. ‘The Gray Friars at Coy- 
entry used to represent mysteries on the festival of Corpus Christi, 
comprising the story of the Old and New Testament, composed in the 
old English rithme, which used to attract vast multitudes of people to 
the city. In the year 1483 Richard HI. visited Coventry in order to 
see the plays, and in 1492 they were acted in presence of Henry VII. 
and his queen. In every great castle the children of the chapel used to 
act religious plays during the twelve days of Christmas and at Corpus 
Christi. There is notice of this in the Earl of Northumberland’s 
household book. In every college pieces of this kiftd used to be per- 
formed. The confraternities of the mysteries were composed of per- 
sons of the most innocent manners and of the purest intentions; and 
who can doubt but that these spectacles tended to keep men familiar 
with the themes which should be ever dearest to the Christian family ?* 
At the same time it is to be remembered that, owing to incorrigible abu- 
ses, they were not every where equally favoured by the encouragement 
of the religious. The reply of the Sacristan, in the convent of the 
Franciscans at Poictou, to Villon, who came to borrow a magnificent 
cope, to be borne by one of his actors in the piece entitled The Passion, 
proves that such spectacles were sometimes regarded with displeasure 
by the clergy.t With respect to the literary merit of these pieces, their 
most disdainful antagonists admit that they are enlivened by boldness of 
incident, and that occasionally they evince an unexpected tenderness and 
delicacy of expression. It was from one of these plays called Adam 


*See Monteil, Hist. des Francais, tom. iii. Hist du Théatre Francais, par Parfait, 
tom. i. 11. Hist. de Poésie Francaise, par Abbé Massieu, régne de Charles VII. 
Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Buleo, annis 1469, 1483, 1487. Antiq. de Paris, 
par Sauval. Wharton, Hist. of English Poetry, &c. 

} Hist. de Poésie Frangaise, par ? Abbé Massieu, 257. 

Vor. U1.—7 E 


50 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and Eve, which Milton saw represented in Italy, that he is said to have 
taken the first hint for his poem of Paradise Lost. In Catholic coun- 
tries, at the present day, there are sometimes to be seen, at banquets, 
certain religious shows in miniature, representing the annunciation, the 
nativity, or the epiphany, and the kind of galvanic effect which these 
innocent spectacles produce upon the sophists would be unaccountable, 
if one had not perceived that they were associated with a deep religious 
feeling, the attempt to recall which produces in minds that detest God, 
those paroxysms, which are supposed to arise only from the pain 
which all indications of a popular and barbarous taste occasion in per- 
sons of delicacy and philosophic refinement. When brought unexpect- 
edly in presence of these innocent representations, they rail like the 
demoniac who came out from the tombs, and sometimes might be 
observed to use almost his words: ‘ Quid mihi et tibi est, Jesu Fili Dei 
altissimi? obsecro te ne me torqueas.”’* ‘There were other spectacles 
exhibited in the middle ages to which I shall merely allude. ‘Those 
professedly ludicrous, though associated with solemn forms, were offen- 
sive abuses against which the clergy loudly protested. Contemporary 
writers speak of them with the utmost abhorrence, and yet perhaps they 
were only the indication of a natural disposition which belongs to men 
in their noblest state, which merely required to be directed and modera- 
ted. Miiller speaks of the inclination of the Doric race to mirth and 
merriment, under which a very serious character was frequently con- 
cealed ;+ and, in fact, when these diversions of the middle ages are des- 
cribed, we might imagine that we were reading of those sports of the 
Lacedemonians which mingled in the same breath the grave and solemn 
lessons of philosophy, and the most ludicrous mimicry and buffoonery. 
Persius, the disciple of the Stoic sect, made Sophron the mimographer, 
the model of his satires; and the grave and philosophic Sparta was the 
only Greek state in which a statue was erected to laughter. Religion, 
indeed, would have the right to reject such a plea in mitigation of sen- 
tence, but when human wisdom proudly inveighs, we may, in justice to 
the character of the middle ages, reply, with the historian of the Doric 
race, that among that people the strictest eravity was found closely uni- 
ted with the most unrestrained jocularity and mirth; in the same man- 
ner as the modern society can lay claim to neither; for as every real 
jest requires for a foundation a firm, rigorous, and grave disposition of 
mind, so moral indifference and a frivolous temperament not only des- 
troy the contrast between eravity and jest, but annihilate the spirit of 
both. 


sg NR AA i A A ee et eae emme eel een oer Se a 


* Luc. vill. 28. + Hist. of the Dorians, Book iii. c, 10. 


’ AGES OF FAITH. 51 


CHAPTER V. 


RETURNING now to matters of more interest, we should observe that 
from the very nature and origin of the Christian religion, there was 
clearly no inconsistency between its principles and the possession of 
human learning. ‘Truth admits of no separations or exclusions. In the 
first astonishment of the awakening soul of men and of nations, when 
apprised of the advent of the Son of God, it was indeed to be expected 
that there would be a temporary suspension of all intellectual exercise, 
and a total obliteration from the memory of all former and perishable 
things ; but the universal and continued indulgence in such a quiescent 
state would, beyond all doubt, be contrary to the order of Providence, 
and opposed to the intentions of the Divine announcement. They who 
had been permitted to see the end of all perfection were at the same 
time made sensible that the commandment was very broad. ‘The inter- 
ests of truth sometimes required the employment of learning to illustrate 
and confirm it, and the Divine promises sanctioned the enjoyment of its 
advantages in declaring that the meek should possess the earth. St. 
Clemens Alexandrinus was the first among the Christians to attack the 
profane authors with their own arms, and to make use of their learning. 
Origen followed in that track, but as St. Augustin says, ‘the faithful 
always accommodated what was good to their own use, wherever it was 
found. How much gold and silver,”’ he says, ‘¢ did the blessed martyr 
Cyprien carry away from Egypt?) How much Lactantius? How 
much Victorinus? Optatus? Hilarius? We ought not to disdain 
what is good in the learning and arts of the heathens : ‘¢imo vero quis- 
quis bonus verusque Christianus est, Domini sui esse intelligat ubicun- 
que invenerit veritatem.”* St. Basil, treating expressly on the advanta- 
ges to be derived from the learning of the Gentiles, found much to praise 
in Homer and the Pythagoreans. The Greek fathers, indeed, are known 
to have endeavoured to imitate the style of Demosthenes and Homer ;t 
and the importance which they attached to the beauties of literature, may 
be inferred from that work of Apollinarius, Bishop of Laodicea, who, 
when Julian published his decree, forbidding the Christians to be in- 
structed in ancient learning, in order to supply the faithful with a speci- 
men of every kind of composition, according to the design of St. Gregory 
Nazianzen, formed the writings of the Evangelists and those of the 
Apostles into dialogues, in the style of Plato. Even St. Jerome had not 
omitted the study of the heathen writers, and in writing to Magnus, a 
Roman orator, he observes that the ecclesiastical writers who preceded 
him had always used this liberty. ‘The passage in which he describes 
his ancient fondness for learning, is truly remarkable. ‘* When I was 
young,” saith he, «I was carried away by a wonderful ardour for learn- 
ing, nor did I presume, like some others, to be my own teacher. I 
heard Apollinarius at Antioch, and worshipped him, yet I would never 


* De Doctrin. Christiana, lib. ii. cap. 18. 40. 
+ Mabillon de Studiis Monasticis, pars li. c. 15. 


52 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


receive his contentious dogmas, When my hair became gray, and be- 
spoke rather the master than the disciple, I went to Alexandria and heard 
Didymus. I was grateful to him, for I learned what I had not known 
before, and I did not lose from his teaching what I had before known. 
Men thought that I would make an end of learning, yet I proceeded 
again to Jerusalem and to Bethleem. With what labour and cost had I 
Bar-aninam for my nocturnal preceptor! for he feared the Jews like 
Nicodemus. Of all these men I make frequent mention in my works. 
Certainly Apollinarius and Didymus differ on many points, so that I 
was borne to one side and the other, for I confessed both of them as my 
masters! I have read Origen. If there be a crime in reading, | must 
confess myself guilty. Yet I never admitted his errors: his genius 
would never have displeased me. Lactantius writes a detestable sen- 
tence in his Institutes, yet who would forbid me to read that powerful 
work because of that one sentence? In like manner I may apply to 
- Origen without fearing his poison. Physicians say that great diseases, 
being incurable, should be left to nature, lest medicaments should agera- 
vate the evil. I have never sought, therefore, to transfer these errors of 
Origen into the Latin tongue, and to publish them to the world. Non 
enim consuevi eorum insultare erroribus quorum miror ingenia. If Or- 
igen were alive again, he would be indignant at you his admirers, who 
have made known his errors; and he would say with Jacob, ‘odicsum 
me fecistis in mundo.’ Let us not imitate his vices whose virtues we 
cannot follow. But the books of Origen may be read with profit for 
their learning and useful matter, and they who object to this should re- 
member, that if there be a woe against those who eall evil good, there is 
also one against those who call good evil.”* It is a modern discovery 
that the Christian literature of early ages is unworthy of the attention of 
scholars. Petrus Crinitus, the friend of Politian and Picus of Mirandu- 
la, says “that he cannot express with what delight he studies the Greek 
and Latin fathers, for their writings seem to him to be treasuries in 
which there is such a varied and multifarious learning and knowledge 
of all things, that they contain nearly all laws and sentences of philoso- 
phy, and nearly all antiquity.”’+ The tragedy composed by St. Grego- 
ry Nazianzen, of which I have already spoken, shows how early it was 
the desire of the Christians to avail themselves of the beauties of heathen 
literature. We do not find them paying any attention to the medium 
through which they might have to pursue intellectual riches. ‘The cel- 
ebrated Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II. studied for three years at 
the Moorish university of Cordova, where the sciences of mathematics 
and medicine were cultivated with great success. It was this pope who 
introduced the use of the Arabic figures into Christian Europe. St. Au- 
gustine scrupled not to make use of the writings of Tichonius, a Dona- 
. tist; and Mabillon, in his treatise on monastic studies, recommends the 
Prolegomena of Walton, and the proofs of Christianity by Grotius, and 
proves that it is consistent with the monastic duties to consult the wri- 
tings of heretics, when they contain nothing contrary to truth.{ Of the 
importance attached to learning in the estimation of men, during the ages 
neuen pant aes Sean aM ES 
* Bpist. lvi. xli. + De honesta Disciplina, lib. viii. 1. 
+ T'ractat. de Studiis Monast. Preefat. pars il. cap. 2. § 2. 


AGES OF FAITH. 53 


of faith, we have evidence in almost all the ecclesiastical monuments 
which have come down to us. We find St. Augustin exposing the folly 
and criminality of certain enthusiasts, who were for dispensing with the 
trouble of learning languages, from expecting a particular inspiration, and 
even for despising all who did not pretend to it as deprived of the grace 
of the Holy Spirit. ‘Let us not tempt Him in whom we believe,” says 
the holy Augustin, ‘lest being deceived by such craftiness of the enemy, 
we should become unwilling even to enter the churches to hear the Gos- 
pel, or to attend to any man reading or preaching, being inflamed with 
the hope of being carried up to the third heaven like the Apostle, there 
to hear ineffable words, and there to see our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
from him, rather than from men, to hear the Gospel. ‘ Caveamus tales 
tentationes superbissimas et periculosissimas.’’’* St. Jerome, too, re- 
proves certain persons who condemned him for his application to learn- 
ing, and who esteemed themselves as saints because they knew nothing.t 
‘‘ Join yourself to a virtuous, tractable, and learned man,”’ is the advice 
of an ascetic writer of the middle ages. 

The decay of learning, during the convulsions which attended the in- 
vasion of the barbarians, was regarded as a great calamity by the Christ- 
ian clergy, whose affecting lamentations over the fall of letters, were a 
proof how highly they esteemed them. St. Gregory of Tours, in the 
preface of his history says, ‘the study of letters and of liberal sciences, 
perishing in the cities of Gaul, amidst the good and the bad actions 
which were there committed, while the barbarians were given up to 
ferocity, and their kings to fury, while the churches were alternately en- 
riched by devout men and plundered by the infidels, there has appeared 
no grammarian, skilful in the art of dialectics, to undertake the descrip- 
tion of these things in prose or verse, so that many men lament, saying, 
Woe to us! the study of letters perishes among us, and there is no one 
who can record the facts of this time; seeing that, I have thought it 
right to preserve, although in an uncultivated language, the memory of 
past things, that future men may be made acquainted with them.”’ ‘The 
promotion of learning was a constant object of solicitude with the sove- 
reign pontiffs. ‘* We are bound,’’ says Pope Alexander III. to Peter 
Abbot of St. Remé, ‘*to provide with so much the more care for the 
convenience of learned and devout men, as the fruit and utility are great 
which result from their labours to the churches of God.’ And ina sub- 
sequent age we find that it was the Roman pontiffs who encouraged the 
learned scholars, who devoted themselves to searching for precious man- 
uscripts, like Poggio, the successive secretary to eight popes. Nicho- 
las V. promised five thousand ducats to him who should produce a man- 
uscript of St. Matthew in Hebrew, and he made Rome an asylum for 
the learned men of the East, when they fled from the Mahometans, car- 
rying with them their literary treasures. It was the popes who assisted 
and supported the first printers, as the workmen of Faust and Schoeffer, 
on their removal to Rome. It was a pope, the great St. Gregory, so 
falsely accused of having burnt the library of Mount Palatine, which 
must have perished long before his time, who was the patron of scholars 


* De Doctrina Christiana Prolog. t Hpist, xxv. 
+ Thom. de Kempii Hortulus Rosarum, 1. 
E 2 


54 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


throughout the universal church. Of the wide diffusion of learning, 
during the middle ages, the generality of modern writers seem not to be 
aware, nor, on the other hand, of the very confined limits within which 
its influence extended before the rise and propagation of the Church. 
At the commencement of the Christian era, we find that books were so 
scarce, and the means of communicating them so scanty, that the great- 
est writers were often unknown to their contemporaries. ‘Thus Strabo 
is not once quoted by Pliny or by any other contemporary naturalist, 
nor is Aretin by Galen. It is probable that they were not aware of 
each other’s existence. Whereas in the middle ages, in the vast society 
of the Church, by means of communication with Rome, and the inter- 
course which was carried on between monasteries, learned and holy 
men, though separated at the greatest distances, were known to each 
other, and Europe became one immense republic of letters. Schlegel 
shows that from the time of Charlemagne manuscripts were multiplied 
in the West with more profusion than they had ever been in the most 
polished times of antiquity, so that the writings of Greece and Rome 
were now studied and commentated upon in remote and desolate regions, 
to which, if it had not been for the ecclesiastical society, their fame 
would have never reached. We find the monk of Melrose, who wrote 
a chronicle of that abbey, quoting the fourth book of Aristotle de Ani- 
malibus, and the eighth of Pliny’s Natural History. In the fifth and 
sixth centuries, amidst the dreadful shock of the fall of the Roman em- 
pire and the desolation of Europe, by the barbarous hordes, Ireland, 
from its situation, as Baron Cuvier remarks, being at a distance from 
the ruin, became the asylum of learning, and monks from Ireland then 
proceeded to carry back the torch to the devastated regions of Gaul and 
Germany. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the ancient learn- 
ing at any time wholly perished in any part of the empire. St. Augus- 
tin speaks of the wide diffusion of the Latin language as an event mira- 
culous, and a result of the special providence of God to facilitate the 
work of evangelizing the nations. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the 
Latin was spoken in all the Gauls to the Rhine, as well as in Spain and 
Italy. So late as the time of St. Bernard, the people generally under- 
stood Latin; and Mabillon places it among his questions, whether the 
sermons of St. Bernard were originally composed in the Latin or in the 
Romance. There was in Europe, as a modern French critic observes, a 
kind of intellectual republic, which was styled ‘‘omnis Latinitas.”’ It 
is certain that St. Bernard sometimes preached in Latin, and his secreta- 
ry says of him, that his eloquence and wisdom are celebrated ‘ through 
all Latinity.”’ Yet he preached also in the Roman wallon, or language 
of the country. In the seventh and eighth centuries it was in Latin that 
even popular songs were composed. When Clotaire II. gained a vic- 
tory in the north of France, his army celebrated it by a Latin song. 

It appears, from the Life of St. Eloy, by St. Ouen, that in the seventh 
century the upper classes of Rouen were familiar with Plato, Aristotle, 
Demosthenes, Herodotus, and Homer, with Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Virgil, 
Menander, Plautus, Horace, Solinus, Varro, and also with other authors, 
of whom we have now nothing but the catalogue of their writings.* 


* See Recherches sur I’ Hist. Relig. et Lit. de Rouen, 41. 


AGES OF FAITH. 55 


St. Gregory of Tours relates that King Gontran, making his entry into 
Orleans, was received with greetings in Syriac and in Latin; for in 
consequence of commercial relations, the oriental languages were then 
taught in the schools of Paris. The chronicles of these ages speak of 
many saints who were skilled in the Roman law. At the end of the 
seventh century, St. Bonet, Bishop of Clermont, was learned in the 
decrees of Theodosius, and St. Didier, Bishop of Cahors, from the year 
629 to 654, applied himself to the study of the Roman law. The tenth 
century is that age of deplorable fame which is said to have been in- 
volved in extreme darkness,—insomuch, that the heretics have made it 
a ground to deny the perpetual and uncorrupt transmission of the doc- 
trine of the Church. Mabillon, aided by his unbounded learning, ex- 
amines the history of this period, and comes to a result widely different 
from theirs: he even proves that the complaints of Cardinal Baronius* 
can only be justified by a regard exclusively directed to the state of 
Rome and Italy at that moment; for that a view of the universal Church 
will demonstrate that, although there were then indeed many evils to be 
deplored, yet all things were not so deplorable but that there were 
some remains of ancient learning; nay, it will show that there were 
then many men of the most eminent sanctity and of sound learning, 
who were able to transmit the uncorrupt doctrine of the Church to pos- 
terity. No age is void of moral darkness. The holy Fathers in prim- 
itive times lamented the reign of wickedness and ignorance: this we 
too lament, and this our posterity will lament also; but never does the 
Church lose the savour of sanctity and of learning which she received 
from Christ.t Ignorance is the punishment of sin; but they who say 
this, continues the master of the sentences, should consider diligently, 
that not every one who is ignorant of something, or who knows some- 
thing less perfectly, is therefore in such ignorance, or ought to be called 
ignorant; because that only should be called ignorance when what 
ought to be known is not known. Such ignorance is the punishment 
of sin when the mind is obscured with vice, so as not to be able to 
know the things which it ought to know.{ This is a darkness which 
involved the race of men in no age of the Church’s history; but the 
light of human learning in Italy was no doubt in the tenth century ob- 
scured, though even then, as Henrion justly remarks, the object of 
studies was good, since it embraced doctrine and morals, the only 
things in reality of which the knowledge is essential.| In the eleventh 
it broke forth again in the various congregations of learned Benedic- 
tines, the success of whose labours are acknowledged by the moderns 
themselves; but even in the tenth century other nations enjoyed greater 
learning: for, it is a mistake of Villemain, when he affirms that Italy 
had uninterruptedly remained more civilized than every other part of 
Europe.§ Spain, though oppressed under the yoke of the Arabians, 
beheld those great prelates, Gennadius of Asturia, Attilanus Zamoren- 
sis, Sisenand and Rudesind of Compostello ; and the state of the Church 
with regard to learning, in Germany, France, England and Ireland, was 


a a a i en oD 


* Ad. An. 900. { Prefat. in V. Secul. Benedict. § 1. 
+ Petr. Lombardi, lib. ii. distinct. xx. \| Hist. de la Papauté, tom. iii, 177. 
§ Tableaux de la Litterature au Moyen Age, i. 97. 


56 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


far happier. Bruno, brother of Otho.the great, and Archbishop of Co- 
logne in that age, is thus described in the chronicle of Magdeburg: 
‘‘He was endowed with a great genius; he was great in Jearning, and 
in all virtue and industry. Being appointed by King Otho to preside 
over the untameable Lotharian nation, he delivered the country from 
robbers, he instructed it with legal discipline, he loved the flock com- 
mitted to him, he saved many from error,—some, by assiduous disputa- 
tions, leading to better things, and others, by maturity of learning, in- 
flaming with a holy desire:—mild in speech, humble in learning, a 
destroyer of evils, an asserter of truth, gentle to the subject, severe to 
the proud, and fulfilling in his own life what he taught to others.”” Of 
Rotgerus, a German bishop in the tenth century, we read that he was 
versed in Greek and Latin, and that wherever he went he used to carry 
about with him his library, like an ark of the Lord.* 

Modern critics have remarked, that the prodigious number of books 
published during the twelfth century, attests the existence of a multitude 
of readers. They admit, that in the city and feudal life of those times, 
a great number of persons, of all classes, employed themselves in read- 
ing, and in reasoning on the books they read.t Even the Provengale 
poetry of the Troubadours, is not free from the influence of classical 
antiquity ; for it contains some literal imitations from the Latin poets, 
and one ‘Troubadour expressly cites Plato, Homer, and Virgil. ‘That 
classical learning was at no time wholly neglected, might be inferred 
from the writings of many whom obscure fame hath concealed from 
ordinary readers; + but the compositions of distinguished men through- 
out the series of ages, place that point beyond question. ‘To attempt to 
give an adequate idea of the learning of the clergy during the ages of 
faith, would be wholly inconsistent with the very narrow limits prescrib- 
ed to this inquiry, and indeed it would be also on other grounds deserv- 
ing of ridicule, since it would indicate great presumption in one who 
is himself without learning, to pretend to estimate that of others. It is 
not for a mere spy to feel ambitious to mount the horses of Achilles. 
Nevertheless, I fain would say something on this subject, not only be- 
cause one feels as it were arrested irresistibly by the kind of solemn and 
romantic interest which is attached to it, but also in consideration of its 
extreme importance, independent of what is required to be shown in 
this place: for though many good men may be disposed to think lightly 
of such disquisitions, there is reason to believe that the strong hold of 
heresy in many heads consists in the opinion, that during the middle 
ages, men were ignorant to such a degree as to be incapable of distin- 
guishing truth from error, history from fable. 

When Mabillon published his Treatise on Monastic Studies, in which 
he proved the antiquity, universality, and great importance of the study 
of learning in the religious orders, the celebrated Armand de Rancé sent 
forth a reply, in which he disproved the necessity for such studies in 
members of the monastic order, and proceeded even to criticize, with 
considerable severity, that part which related to the conduct of the an- 


* Mabillon, Pref. in V. Secul. Ben. § 2. 
{ Villemain, Tableaux de la Litterature au Moyen Age, i. 307. 
¢ Vide Heeren, Geschichte des Studiums der Classischen. Litteratur im mittelalter. 


AGES OF FAITH. 57 


cient religious in the cultivation of the sciences. ‘The facts, however, 
he did not disprove: and although he might feel that no obligation 
resulted from the example of such numbers of holy monks who had 
applied to learning, to music, and even to poetry, he could hardly have 
expected that the judgment of many readers would acquiesce in his sug- 
gestion, that these men must have forgotten death and judgment, because 
they had been anxious to procure a copy of Cicero’s books, de Oratore, 
and the Institutions of Quintilian. At the same time it cannot be denied 
but that, independent of the object presented to us in this place, there 
would be more occasion for explaining on what grounds the elect chil- 
dren justified their cultivation of human learning,—though, to those 
who stand near the mountain, the answer is invelyed:i in no “difficulty, — 
than for proving a fact which is so evident to every one conversant with 
the history of the middle age, that they did possess it in an eminent 
degree. It is, however, to illustrate the latter proposition that I am at 
present called upon. But to what order shall I first turn for examples ? 
or what bright gems shall I select from the overflowing plenty in the 
intellectual treasury of the meek during the ages of faith? 

Before I attempt to enter upon the subject, I would observe, that to 
a Catholic, not only the philosophical, as we shall see in another place, 
but also the literary history of the world, is prodigiously enlarged ; ob- 
jects change their relative position, and many are brought into resplen- 
dent light, which before were consigned to obscurity. While the mod- 
erns continue, age after age, to hear only of the Cesars and the philos- 
ophers, and to exercise their ingenuity with tracing parallel characters 
among their contemporaries, the Catholic discovers that there lies, 
between the heathen civilization and the present, an entire world, illus- 
trious with every kind of intellectual and moral greatness: the names 
which are first upon his tongue are no longer Cicero and Horace, but 
St. Augustin, St. Bernard, Alcuin, St. Thomas, St. Anselm: the places 
associated in his mind with the peace and dignity of learning, are no 
longer the Lyceum or the Academy, but Citeaux, Cluny, Crowland, or 
the Oxford of the middle ages. 

Perhaps I shall best discharge the office I have undertaken by aban-. 
doning all pretensions to an oratorical enumeration of illustrious titles, 
which need only be named to proclaim genius and wisdom in its utmost 
cultivation,—and by simply taking detached statements from the history 
and other writings of the middle ages, which will prove that, in what- 
ever direction we look, we shall be sure to discover some eminent 
example of extensive and excellent erudition. ‘Taking them then as 
they might occur to one who at hazard would open the ancient chron- 
icles, how remarkable is this testimony of Bede, that Thobias, the 
Saxon Bishop of Rochester, could speak familiarly, not only the Latin, 
but also the Greek language? What an example is presented by the 
venerable Bede in his own learning! Barlaam, who first made the 
Italians acquainted with Homer, was a monk of St. Basil, who came 
from one of the seven convents which the religious of that order pos- 
sessed at Rossano alone, where they cultivated the popular Greek dia- 
lect, which had remained in Calabria. What episcopal see, what holy 
monastery, during the middle ages, was not associated with the names 

Vou. I1.—8 


58 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of men most illustrious for their love of letters? Who has ever fath- 
omed that sea of learning in Dominic and Aquinas, 
‘© Whence many rivulets have since been turn’d 


Over the garden Catholic, to lead 
Their living waters, and have fed its plants ?” # 


The fact of the existence of libraries in the early monasteries, even 
in the days of St. Pachomius, is adduced by Mabillon in proof of the 
ereat antiquity of monastic studies.t Celebrated were the libraries of 
Lerins, of Tours, of Monte Cassino, of St. Germain-des-Prés, where 
Dacherius was librarian when he compiled his Spicilegium, of Bobbio, 
which was so rich in ancient manuscripts, of Luxueil, of Corby, of St. 
Remi at Rheims, of Fulda, of St. Gall, of St. Emmeranus, at Ratispon, 
and of Einseidelin; in the last of which I have seen curious manuscripts 
of Bede’s works. 

In England, our libraries are but of modern date; for the pseudo-re- 
formers did not spare even those which they found in the Universities : 
but in the libraries on the continent before the French revolution, were 
collected the accumulated stores of the learning of the middle ages. In 
the abbey of Jumiéges, the writings of Annon, its learned abbot in the 
tenth century, might have been found as he had left them. There were 
no less than seventeen hundred manuscripts in the abbey of Peterbo- 
rough. The libraries of the Gray Friars in London, that of the abbey 
of Leicester, and that of the priory at Dover, contained noble collections, 
as did also those of Crowland, Wells, and many others. ‘To these all 
persons had access. At Crowland it was ordained that the greater 
books, of which there were more than three hundred volumes, were 
never to be taken for the use of remote schools without license of the 
abbot; but smaller books, of which there were more than four hundred, 
such as Psalters, Catos, and Poets, might be lent to boys and acquaint- 
ances of the monks, but only for one day.t The magnificent library of 
the abbey of St. Victor at Paris, used to be open to the public during 
three days every weck.|| ‘There were even public libraries attached to 
some parish churches. Baptist Goy, the first curate of the parish of St. 
Magdalen at Paris, left his libraries to the church, one for the use of 
the clergy of the parish, and the other for that of the poor parishioners.§ 
The library of Marucelli, at Florence, was founded by a virtuous pre- 
late, for the use of such men of learning as were poor, as the inscription 
testifies—‘ Publice et maxime pauperum utilitati.”’ In the works of 
Petrus Crinitus,** there is repeated mention of learned men,—Picus of 
Mirandula, Politian, and others,—meeting together in the Marcian h- 
brary at Florence, to discuss questions of philosophy and literature. St. 
Louis, in the same manner, used to visit the public library which he had 
founded at the holy chapel in Paris, for the purpose of conversing with 
learned men. There is a character of learning and sanctity belonging to 
the very rooms which contained the ancient collections, as may be wit- 
nessed in the library of Merton at Oxford, and in that of St. Michel-in- 
Bosco, at Bologna; in which latter, over each department of books, was 


* Dante, Parad. xii. + De Studiis Monasticis, Par. 1. cap. 6. 
+ Ingulph. 105. || Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. ii. 5. 
§ Lebeuf, ii. c. 4. ** De Honest. Discip. 


AGES OF FAITH. 59 


a noble painting of the principal writer belonging to it. Thus over the 
scholastic philosophy was seen the angelic disputing with the subtle doc- 
tor on the “universal 4 parte rei.’’? The student of Rome, when he finds 
himself in the libraries of St. Augustin and of the Minerva, waited upon 
by the men of those venerable orders, seems of necessity to imbibe 
somewhat of the grave and holy spirit of Christian antiquity. Bede 
mentions the multitude of books that used to be brought from Rome to 
England by holy bishops on their return thence. St. Osmond, Bishop 
of Salisbury, who completed the building of that cathedral, collected 
thither men of learning from all parts, and retained as well as invited 
them by his liberality: he formed a library, and enriched it literally 
with the works of his own hands, transcribing books for it, and binding 
them himself. So again in the time of Pope St. Gregory VII. Herrand, 
Abbot of Ilsenburg, afterwards Bishop of Halberstadt, having founded a 
school at Ilsenburg for all liberal arts, and collected many learned men, 
made there a noble library, which was particularly rich in old histories.* 
Of the abbot, William of Hirschau, we read, that he became when 
young most learned in all kinds of science, so as to surpass his precep- 
tors, and that he mastered all the arts which are called liberal;t that he 
was skilled in philosophy, in dialectics, in music,—so that he wrote 
upon it,—in mathematics, arithmetic, and astronomy; that he procured 
copies of holy and profane books to be written out in beautiful letters, 
in which work twelve monks of the house sat daily employed. He 
used to send good men to govern other monasteries, many of which 
became celebrated in consequence, among which are reckoned that of 
St. Peter at Erfurt. There were above two hundred and sixty men in 
his abbey, who all loved and revered him. Mabillon desires his reader 
to consider what was the immense manual labour exercised by the Cis- 
tercians and Carthusians in copying manuscripts and writing them out 
for the public, in revising, and correcting, and collating the works of 
the holy fathers, and to consider too how all this was done in a spirit 
of humility, and pious fervour, and penitence, for the good of the church 
and the greater glory of God. ‘Be not troubled at the labour through 
fatigue,’ says Thomas 4 Kempis in addressing youth, ‘for God is the 
cause of every good work, who will render to every man his recom- 
pence, according to his pious intention, in heaven. When you are 
dead, those persons who read the volumes that were formerly written 
beautifully by you, will then pray for you: and if he who giveth a cup 
of cold water, shall not lose his reward, much more, he who gives the 
living water of wisdom, shall not lose his recompence in heaven.’’{ 
The collection of the Latin Fathers on vellum, written in the most 
beautiful characters, and illuminated with exquisite paintings, which is 
in the Libraria Medicea in the cloister of St. Lorenzo at Florence, or 
the splendid choral books and Bible, in twenty-two volumes, of the 
Carthusian monastery of Ferrara, will give an idea of the labour and 
admirable skill of the monks in this art. Albert was a monk of Cluny, 
distinguished for the number of beautiful books which he wrote out and 
bound. ‘The Bible was covered with beryl stones: he had read it 


* Voigt’s Hildebrand als Papst Greg. VII. und sein Zeitalter, 164. 
t Chron. Hirsang. An. 1071. + Doctrinale Juvenum, cap. 4. 


60 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


through twice and corrected it twice, and at the end of his labour he 
fell at the feet of the seniors of Cluny, beseeching them to pray to God 
for him and for his father, that their sins might be forgiven them.* Es- 
tates and legacies were often bequeathed for the support of the scripto- 
rium of abbeys; at Montrouge, indulgences were given for the supply 
of books, and vestments, so that to that poor rustic church crowds of 
learned men and scholars used to come from Paris, to cast their little 
piece of silver or gold into the trunk appointed for the alms in behalf of 
learning. By the Pope’s Bull, in the year 1246, which stated that the 
churches in Prussia and Livonia, being as yet infant, were unprovided 
with books, monks and other persons were invited to send them a sup- 
ply of books out of their abundance, or to employ writers at their 
expense for furnishing them; and indulgences were extended on their 
complying.t 

In the middle ages, books were generally bound by monks. Char- 
lemagne, by charter, in 790, gave to the abbots and monks of Sithin, an 
unlimited right of hunting, in order that the skins of the deer should be 
used in making covers for their books. The prodigious number of 
volumes frequently composed by one writer in the middle ages, is con- 
stantly a subject of astonishment to those who visit libraries. The 
works cf Albert the Great form twenty-two folio volumes! But one 
might account for this in the same manner as ‘that in which Cicero 
explains the wonderful dispatch with which Pompey accomplished his 
naval projects, when he says, ‘* Whence had he this incredible celerity ? 
For he possessed no extraordinary power of impelling ships, no un- 
heard-of art of navigation, no new winds; but the things which gener- 
ally delay others did not detain him; no avarice diverting his course for 
objects of plunder, no lust carried him away to pleasure, no love of ease 
to delights, no fear of labour to repose.”’t It is to be remembered also, 
that the chief of a convent had often as many as fifty young men who 
studied under him, and who wrote out extracts for him. St. Peter the 
venerable abbot of Cluny, in the twelfth century, employed learned men 
to translate certain books from the Arabic. St. Raymond of Pennafort 
procured the Arabic and Hebrew tongues to be taught in several con- 
vents of his order; in the abbey of Tavistock, of which so many of the 
abbots were learned men, a regular course of lectures on the Saxon 
tongue used to be given, which was continued until the dissolution by 
Henry VIII. 

It has not been sufficiently remarked with what care the monastic 
philosophers endeavoured to cultivate the barbarous idioms which arose 
upon the cessation of the Latin tongue. The only grammar of the Ro- 
mance language was composed by Basil Maier of Baldegg, a monk of 
Einseidelin.|| During the conquests of the Teutonic order in the North, 
it is the bishops who are found insisting upon the importance of eculti- 
vating the national idiom, in order to instruct the people in the precepts 
of the orthodox faith.§ In Italy, the professed champions of the vulgar 
tongue went so far as to condemn the study of Greek and Latin, as 


* Chronicon Cluniacensis, x. + Voigt. Geschichte Preuss. ii. 491, 
+ Pro Lege Manilia, 14. || Tschudi Einseid. Chronic. 172. 
§ Voigt. Geschichte Preussens, iii. 146. 


AGES OF FAITH. 61 


the dialogues of Speroni the Paduan, in the sixteenth century, can 
testify.* But probably, while poets and fine writers were condemning 
the clergy for the importance which they attached to the ancient lan- 
guages, they would have been found, under many circumstances, as in 
Ireland, perfectly willing that the national tongue of one country should 
be sacrificed to that of another, which, however, would have been not 
the less preserved without their co-operation, as it was there by bish- 
ops, priests, and friars. Mabillon observes, that we owe the histories 
of England and of many other kingdoms, almost solely to the Benedic- 
tine monks.t Especial regard was paid by them to the studies con- 
nected with history. Matthew Paris says, that in every royal monas- 
tery in England there was one learned and diligent scribe, who used to 
note down all the actions and events of each reign, and that on the 
death of the king, this account was referred to a general chapter, to be 
examined, and afterwards it was inserted in the chronicle, which was 
to transmit them to posterity. We should have been always children 
in our national history but for the writings of Bede, Ingulphus, William 
of Malmesbury, Matthew of Westminster, and Matthew of Paris. In 
the same manner we are indebted for the history of France to Odo of 
Vienne, William of Jumicges, Oderic Vitalis, and other monks; for 
that of Italy, to Paul the deacon, Erkempert, Leo Marsicanus, and 
Peter the deacon; and for that of Germany, to the abbot Reginonus, 
Wilichind, Lambert of Ascenburg, Ditmar, and Herman. ‘In our 
schools,’’? says Mabillon, ‘‘ were taught all branches of learning, but 
every other study was referred to that of the sacred Scriptures and of 
the holy Fathers.”” Whenever the atrocity of wars did not impose 
silence on the Muses, those ancient academies were schools of eloquence 
as well as of virtue. ‘The profane authors were studied with the sole 
limitation of excluding what was immoral. Thus St. Anselm, writing 
to Maurice, prescribed to Arnulphus that he should read Virgil and 
other authors, ‘‘exceptis his, in quibus, aliqua turpitudo sonat.”’ Cele- 
brated was the learning of Gerbert at the time when he only taught 
in the cathedral school of Rheims, where he had for his pupils King 
Robert and the Emperor Otho III. and Fulbert, who became such a 
learned priest. Mabillon shows, that the joys and sweets of study 
might, without scruple, be possessed by monks, who, for the sake of 
recreation, might read voyages, elegant orations, or heroic poems. ‘The 
books of Virgil were under the pillow of St. Hugo VI. Abbot of Cluny, 
though he had a dream which represented the fables of poets as a 
poison.{ Yet his judgment probably outweighed it. St. Augustin 
makes use of a verse of Virgil to illustrate a mode of expression in the 
holy Scriptures. || 

We find that no branch of learning was disdained by the monks. 
Among the fathers of Italian literature, Pignotti acknowledges many 
Tuscan monks of the Dominican order, from whose works, he says, 
even at the present day, the students of the language imbibe the purest 
draughts of learning, such as Bartholomew of St. Concordio, Beato 
Giordano, a famous preacher, Dominico Cavalea, equally celebrated for 


* Dialogo delle Lingue. t De Studiis Monasticis, i. 16. 
+ Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, 423. F | Enchiridion, cap. 13. 


62 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


his divine eloquence, and Jacob Passavanti, who, besides being a most 
admirable preacher, gave lectures upon philosophy and theology in vari- 
ous cities. It was this friar who directed the building of the church of 
Santa Maria Novella: but his sermons, his theology, and philosophy, 
have all disappeared, and his Mirror of true Penance alone remains,— 
an ornament of the language, being written first in Latin and afterwards 
translated by himself into the vulgar tongue. ‘The works of these theo- 
logians enjoy the double advantage of teaching at once Christian truths 
and elegance of style. The precepts sweetly penetrate the heart with 
a soft unction: and such is the beauty of the language, that we seem to 
hear the most eloquent fathers of the church.* 

In the beginning of the ninth century, John Scotus, named Erigenus, 
from his country Erin, or Ireland, which was then renowned through- 
out the west for its learning, had travelled as far as Greece through 
his ardour for philosophic studies. ‘I did not fail,” he says, ‘*to visit 
every place or temple where the philosophers used to compose and 
deposit their secret works, and there is not one of the learned men, 
who had any knowledge of their philosophical writings, that I did not 
question.’’*t He resided at the court of Charles-le-Chauve, who invited 
many learned men from Ireland and from the Anglo-Saxons, insomuch, 
that instead of saying, as before, ‘‘schola palatii,’? men used then to 
say, ‘‘palatium schole.”’ John Erigenus, as the chief of this school, 
used to lecture on Plato and Aristotle, the former of whom he called the 
greatest of the philosophers of the world, and the latter, the most subtle 
inquirer among the Greeks as to the diversity of natural things. t He was 
profoundly versed in Greek, and probably in Hebrew, so that, at least, 
on the ground of his extensive learning, we may be allowed to mention 
him. With the same reserve one may also allude to Abailard, though 
his blessed end may free his memory from every dark association. 
This extraordinary man was said by his contemporaries to have been 
ignorant of nothing in heaven or on earth, excepting himself. Peter 
of Cluny, who used to call him the Socrates of the Gauls, put these 
words upon his tomb: ‘Ille sciens, quicquid fuit ulli scibile.”’ Heloisa 
had studied under him philosophy and theology, Latin, Greek, and 
Hebrew. Of Alcuin I shall speak shortly; but there are names less 
renowned that one ought not to pass over in silence. Leon, of Ostia, 
who wrote the voluminous Chronicles of Mount Cassino, by order of 
the Abbot Orderic, in the eleventh century, has merited the highest 
praise of Baronius and Dupin; Eginhard, the secretary of Charlemagne, 
Paul, the deacon of Aquilea, whose life was spared when convicted of 
a conspiracy against the emperor, on consideration of his learning, 
Wiiliam, Archbishop of Tyre, and James of Vitri, are historians of 
whom the most cultivated age might be proud. A German monk, who 
lived in the middle of the eleventh century, Lambert von Affschenbourg, 
wrote an admirable history of the wars of Italy against the empire, in a 
style imitated from the great models of antiquity; he had studied in his 
convent Livy, ‘Tacitus, and Sallust. At the end of the tenth century, 
amidst wars and disorders, the monk Gerbert, in the monasteries of 


* Hist. of Tuscany, ii. t+ Wood Hist. et Antiquit. Oxon. lib. i. 15. 
t Jean, Erig. de Divisione Nature, i. c. 33. 16. 


: AGES OF FAITH. 63 


Aurillac and of Bobbio, was studying the most precious manuscripts of 
Latin antiquity, and some even that we possess not; he was studying 
metaphysics, geometry, history and literature; he was inventing works 
of ingenious mechanism, and exchanging them for manuscripts. ‘* We 
do not send you the sphere,’’ he writes to one of his friends, ‘it is not 
a thing that costs little labour amidst so many occupations. If, there- 
fore, you are very earnest in these studies, send us the volume of the 
Achilleid of Stacius, carefully transcribed; with that present, you will 
be able to draw this sphere from me, which you can never procure gra- 
tis, on account of the difficulty of such a work.’’ ‘The zeal of Lupus, 
Abbot of Ferriers, in the ninth century, induced him to write to the 
pope, to request that he would send him a copy of Quintilian, and of a 
treatise of Cicero. His correspondence with other abbots respecting 
the loan of manuscripts is highly curious. One friend having sent to 
borrow a manuscript, Lupus sends back the messenger without giving 
it to him, because, though a monk and trustworthy, he was travelling 
on foot. In the thirteenth century the Dominican and Franciscan 
orders produced men of most remarkable genius and learning. Baron 
Cuvier says that it is really astonishing to reflect upon what was written 
by Albertus Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, though he was of Burgundy, 
who composed an immense Encyclopedia, St. Thomas Aquinas, that 
meek master of the sapient throng, and Roger Bacon; for though the 
latter composed but comparatively small treatises, they are full of genius, 
and evince a most extraordinary spirit of discovery. It may be well 
to compare this language of a great modern naturalist with that of some 
Catholic historians. The learning of the Franciscans was celebrated. 
Monteil says, that there was justice in the old proverb, ‘parler Latin 
devant les Cordeliers.”’** Dugdale says, that the Franciscan order has 
yielded so immense a number of men renowned for learning and piety, 
that it is impossible to mention them ;t and he states, that in England 
many extraordinary men proceeded also from the schools of the Augus- 
tinians.t 
Notwithstanding the zeal which was evinced for manuscripts, the 
monks are accused of neglecting, and, in consequence of the scarceness 
of parchment, of cancelling them, though it is not probable that the 
latter was ever done with that reckless disregard for the intrinsic value 
or rarity of the original, which some modern writers suppose. It does 
not appear that the publishers of the manuscripts of the classics accused 
the monks of neglecting them. Petrarch only says to his brother, ‘If 
I am dear to you, charge some faithful and learned man to travel through 
Tuscany, and to search the shelves and chests of the monks, and other 
men of instruction, in hopes of producing something to allay my thirst.” 
It is true they speak of dark corners and iron clasps, but it is only to 
give an air of greater importance to their own activity, and not to cen- 
sure the monks who had them in possession. ‘The description which 
Benvenuto da Imola gives of the visit of Boccacio to Monte Cassino, in 
which he says that the library was left open, that the books were cov- 
ered with dust, some of them torn and defaced, and that the grass was 


* Hist. des Frangais, tom. iii. 395. { Monast. Anglic. vol. ii. 6. 
t Ib. vol. ii. 224. ‘ 


64 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


growing in the windows, besides that the sum of its testimony amounts 
to little, contains intrinsic evidence of having been written with a hostile 
mind. ‘Fast shut and with great care the library of sacred books is 
to be preserved,’”’ says a writer of the thirteenth century, ‘from all 
defilement of dust, from fire and from damp, from thieves and from the 
sound of clamour, from clay off the feet and from the corrosion of 
worms, from all stain and rent of leaves. He is not worthy to read a 
sacred book who knows not how to take care of it, and who neglects to 
put it back in its proper place. Thus must be preserved the treasury 
of the church, made and edited by holy doctors, written and collected 
by good writers, and provided by God for the consolation of many.’’* 
That only one copy of Tacitus should have been found in an old chest 
in the monastery of St. Gall, is no proof that the ancient learning would 
soon have perished through culpable neglect, since manuscripts of that 
author were always scarce, and one instance of carelessness will not 
justify an universal charge, not to remark that the searchers for manu- 
scripts, like hunters, were no doubt often guilty of exaggerating their 
difficulties. Chateaubriand says he does not remember to have found in 
any catalogue of the ancient monasteries of France a single copy of 'Taci- 
tus. 'The Benedictine monks of Corby possessed the first five books of 
his Annals.t The only manuscript of Phedrus that existed was in the li- 
brary of the cathedral of Rheims. It appears even that the condition of 
the copies of manuscripts in one monastery would be known to monks 
living in another. Peter the venerable abbot of Cluny, writing to 
Guigo, prior of a Carthusian monastery, and sending him some books, 
assigns as his reason for not sending with them the tract of St. Hilary 
upon the Psalms, that he had found in his own copy the same corro- 
sions as existed in that of the Carthusians.t In erasing Cicero’s book, 
De Republica, to write upon the parchment St. Augustin’s Commentary 
on the Psalms, it may be conceived how naturally they might conclude, 
that they were substituting a work of incomparably superior value, and 
they would hardly have supposed that the former would not come down. 
to posterity, since so much of it was preserved even in the writings of 
Lactantius and other fathers. On the invention of printing, the monks 
were the first to appreciate its value and importance. In the year 
1474, a book was printed by the Augustin monks of a convent in the 
Rhingau. The first patrons of Caxton were Thomas Milling, Bishop of 
Hereford, and the Abbot of Westminster, in which abbey he established 
his printing-office. The first printing press in Italy was in the monas- 
tery of St. Scholastica at Subiaco, the productions of which are sought 
after with such avidity on account of their extraordinary beauty. It 
was the Bishop of Holun who enabled Mathison to introduce printing 
into Iceland. In the year 1480 a printing press was established in the 
Benedictine monastery of St. Alban, of which William Wallingford was 
the prior. John Whethamstede, abbot of that house, was celebrated 
for his love of learning. Soon after the introduction of printing, another 
press was established in the abbey of ‘Tavistock, where the printer was 
a monk, Thomas Ryehard. 


* Thom. de Kempis Doctrinale Juvenum, cap. 5. 
+ Mabil. Prefat. in iii. Secul. Bened. § 4. { 8. Petri ven. Epist. lib. 1. 24, 


AGES OF FAITH. 65 


Along with this prodigious discovery for the propagation of learning, 
appeared that admirable society of fervent disciples of our Lord, who 
demonstrated the art of combining the interests of piety with those of 
learning, not only exercising, but even teaching it, as in the incompara- 
ble work of Father Jouvency, the Ratio discendi et docendi. Among 
the first fathers of the society, Salmeron, at the age of twenty-one, 
Laynez at twenty-four, and Bobadilla at twenty-six, ‘ad acquired such 
learning, that they were the admiration of the court of Paul III.; and 
Bellarmin, before the age of thirty, had composed seven learned contro- 
versial treatises. ‘lolet and Vasquez, at the age of twenty-five, began 
to be the oracles of the universities of Spain. But the services of the 
Jesuits in multiplying editions of excellent books have never been 
appreciated ; though independent of all other benefits, that work alone 
gave them an unquestionable title to the gratitude of Christians in all 
future ages. Of the love which men bore for learning during the middle 
ages, we have many curious and memorable instances. ‘The Abbot 
Lupus, in a letter to Einard, says, ‘‘ The love of letters is innate in me 
almost from the first days of boyhood.” His love of learning induced 
him to travel into Germany to Fulda, not in order to learn the German 
language, but ‘that he might feed his soul with sacred study and erudi- 
tion.”’* St. Liudger, when a child, used to make imitations of books 
with the bark of trees, and with them to form a little library. Whena 
youth he travelled to many countries for the sake of attending the lec- 
tures of learned men; and on his return from York into Saxony he 
carried with him a quantity of books. John of Salisbury, in a letter to 
Count Henry says, ‘that in his late interview with Peter, Abbot of St. 
Remy, that holy man had affirmed that nothing was sweeter to him in 
life than to converse with men of letters upon subjects of learning.’’t 
Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, in the thirteenth century, was 
celebrated for his love and encouragement of literature. Besides having 
libraries in all his palaces, it is related that the floor of his common 
apartment used to be covered with books, so that it was no easy matter 
to approach him. St. Bonaventura, on account of his singular virtues 
and most admirable learning, having been offered the archbishopric of 
York in England, begged of the pope, Clement IV., to permit him to 
continue in his evangelical poverty to serve the holy church by his 
studies of holy Scripture and divinity. Let us be satisfied, without 
demanding further evidence, and confess that we have no reason to 
accuse the middle ages on the ground of their neglect of learning. Is 
it for the present race of men to boast of being the first to appreciate 
the value of books, when their type of a great sovereign exhibited one, 
who for a mere political and commercial trick exported from the coast 
of France the contents of some of the richest libraries in the world, con- 
sisting of superb Benedictine editions, and of vast treasures of ancient 
books, which had been plundered from the monasteries during the revo- 
lution, and then piled up in churches till they reached the very roof, for 
the express purpose of casting them into the sea, in order that the ship 
might take in coffee and sugar in their place?t_ Who now loves learn- 


* Mabillon, Prefat. in iv. Secul. Benedict. § 8. ) 
+ Joan. Saresberiensis, Epist. clxxii. t In the year 1809. 
Vou. Il.—9 F 2 


66 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ing on its own account? May not this age, notwithstanding all its 
pretended freedom, supply posterity with matter for another treatise, 
like that of Lucian, on men of learning in pay of the great? what writer 
is not now, at least, in pay of the public? and when was learning more 
independent than during the middle ages?) Of how many branches of 
learning might we not say, what one of the greatest natural philosophers 
of the present age affirmed of science, that ‘‘ there are very few persons 
in England who pursue it with true dignity: it is followed as connected 
with objects of profit.”’* The writers of Catholic times were never 
drudges for vain man’s applause, or for base lucre. Not for the world’s 
sake, for which now they toil who send forth lying books, but for the 
real manna grew they mighty in learning. Letters are, indeed, profess- 
edly cultivated, and spoken of with admiration; but where are they 
seen to act upon minds with that real power which they exercised 
during the ages of faith? where is there now a student, like St. Ed- 
mund, or a master, like Bede, who used to be so excited by his reading, 
and moved to compunction, that often while he was reading and teach- 
ing he used to burst into tears? 

‘¢ Consider the happiness and content of a scholar’s life,’’ says the 
author of the meditations which were compiled for the English College 
at Lisbon. <‘'The pleasure of learning is most pure and etherial, most 
constant, gathering strength with her increase; finally most secure and 
honourable without any danger of foul wretchedness, blemish of fame, or 
breach of friendship ; whereas all other pleasures are gross, tumultuous, 
and sordid. In point of dignity too scholars have the pre-eminence ; 
for there is no man but laughs at a fool how rich soever, and in his 
heart respects a scholar though never so poor.’’t Thus wrote these 
holy men, whose pathetic statement of the prospects which then awaited 
their students on their return to England, where so many were martyr- 
ed, cannot be read without the deepest emotion. ‘‘ None,’’ say they, 
‘but those who have had the experience can truly conceive the condi- 
tions and difficulties of this state.’? But who in our days of compara- 
tive facility in the pursuit of letters is found to speak with the same 
reverence and love for learning? ‘Turn to whatever side we will, the 
utmost we can expect to hear is the language of Callicles. ‘*I love to 
see a youth devoted to philosophy, but when a man continues to culti- 
vate it, I deem him worthy of stripes; for however ingenuous he may 
be by nature, he becomes servile through study. For he flies from the 
centre of political affairs, and all the custom of forensic assemblies, 
hiding himself and whispering in some corner with three or four boys 
all his life; and never coming forward to sound forth any thing liberal 
or magnificent. Truly, O Socrates, I love you; and therefore I say to 
you that you are neglecting what you ought to meditate, and that you 
are moulding that generous excellence of your mind to a certain boyish 
form, and disqualifying yourself for all active and public affairs of life, 
and neglecting to exercise yourself in matters which would make you 
seem to be wise, and procure you fame and riches, and many other good 
things.’’{ With what effect do we suppose such persuasions would 


* Sir H. Davy’s Consolations in Travel, 1830. + Part iv. c. 3. 
t Plato Gorgias. 


AGES OF FAITH, G7 


have been addressed to the studious inhabitants of cloisters and colleges 
in the middle ages, when it was known that a Divine blessing was on 
the man who had borne the yoke from his youth, who should sit solita- 
ry and hold his peace? But it will be said, these were all men separate 
to the church. ‘The laity during this time were in a state of deplorable 
ignorance. No greater error than to suppose that they were. The 
evidence which has been already adduced of the wide diffusion of learn- 
ing, might be still further strenethened, if we were to visit the places 
where one might least expect to find it; for we should frequently dis- 
cover, even in the feudal castle, men of great erudition. It is said, that 
a single book often formed its library, which had the appearance of a 
piece of furniture, being enclosed within boards, locked up, and opened 
as a kind of sanctuary, from which during the long evenings of winter 
men used to read without ceasing: but one book then contained a great 
deal of matter, if we may judge from the compilations which have come 
down to us, and this is after all but an exaggerated picture of the little 
encouragement afforded to study by the habits of feudal life. Little 
favourable as they may have been to a constant fortuitous and desultory 
reading, which St. Bonaventura says, does not edify because it renders 
the mind still more rambling and unstable,* still there were some points 
in which they were more in accordance with the interests of real learn- 
ing than those of the modern society ; for as letters have in them some- 
thing generous, they inspire an aversion for exercises in which the mind 
does not participate; they render men, as Don Savedra says, solemn 
and melancholy, lovers of retirement, and averse to public employ- 
ments, and such a disposition found many circumstances of feudal life 
as if peculiarly accommodated to its state. We are told, indeed, in the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel, that Lord Cranstoun’s elfin page was sur- 
prised to find Michael Scot’s book on the person of the wounded Sir 
William of Deloraine. 


‘¢ Much he marvell’d a knight of pride, 
Like a book-bosom’d priest should ride.” 


But the fact is, that great numbers of nobles and princes in the mid- 
dle ages were men of considerable learning, fond of books; and many 
who were themselves without it, respected and encouraged it in others, 
like Theodoric, who was so passionately fond of learned men, though 
he could not even write his own name. Gaston Phebus, that celebra- 
ted knight and feudal prince, was so attached to learning that he formed 
a collection of Greek, Latin, and Italian authors; and it is to the educa- 
tion which she received at his court, that historians ascribe the admira- 
ble beauty of the writings of Clotilde de Surville, which have been late- 
ly restored to light. De la Barre, the historian of Corbeil, says, “ that 
Anthony Seigneur de Carnazet exalted the honour of his house by add- 
ing to the lustre of’chivalry the glory of learning, and produced the fruits 
of his noble mind, in his discourses on morals to be the instruction of 
his children, having the courage to proclaim this truth, that science is 
more estimable than nobility, riches, strength, or valour.”” ‘The Secre- 
tary of Anthony de Gingins, President of Savoy under Duke Charles 
II., composed his Mirouer du Monde, while residing in the castle of 


* S. Bonav. Speculum Novitiorum, cap. 15. 


68 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


that old nobleman in the country of Gex, at the foot of the Jura, where 
he found a library containing, as he says, many beautiful and exquisite 
books, such as Strabo, Ptolemy, ’Especule Naturel of Vincent of Beau- 
vais, Pliny, Albumasar, and others, from which he made extracts, and 
composed in the Gothic and French language this present book, enti- 
tled, Le Mirouer du Monde.* Frangois de Malherbe, on his return to 
Caen from his travels, during which he had resided at Heidelberg and 
Basle for the sake of attending the lectures of professors, delivered dis- 
courses in the public schools of the University of Caen, with his sword 
at his side, of which practice Huet gives other examples. Nicholas 
Vauquelin sieur des Iveteaux, author of the poem on the Institution of a 
Prince, delivered discourses publicly in the same university in the dress 
of acavalier.t Evena gentleman of Gastine, in Poitou, who had no 
other theme but hunting, and the recollections of his youth, became dis- 
tinguished as a writer in prose and verse, as in the instance of Jacques 
de Fouilloux, whom Gouget inserts in his history of French authors. 
Gaufridus Bellus, the fourteenth Count of Angers, is described as admi- 
rable for probity and justice, and though engaged in the profession of 
arms, excellently learned and most eloquent among the clergy and lai- 
ty.|| Fulco the good, Count of Anjou, is said by the same historian to 
have been very learned, and a profound master of learning among brave 
soldiers. St. Odo, the second abbot of Cluny, relates that his father 
used to know by heart the histories of the ancients and the novels of Jus- 
tinian, and that the evangelical words were constantly heard at his table.§ 
What learned nobles did England possess in Catholic times! how did 
the true sentiments of a Christian gentleman breathe in every line of the 
works of Antony Woodville, Earl of Rivers, as remarkable for goodness 
as for erudition! John Tiptoft, the learned and accomplished Earl of 
Worcester, was so great an orator, that at Rome he was said to have 
drawn tears from the eyes of Pope Pius IJ. On the flight of Edward 
IV. he was taken prisoner and beheaded. Caxton exclaims on this event, 
‘*O good blessed Lord God! what grete loss was it of that noble, virtu- 
ous, and well disposed Lord, and what worship had he at Rome in the 
presence of our holy fader the Pope, and so in all other places unto his 
deth ; at which deth, every man that was there might learn to die and take 
his deth patiently.’’ The learning of many of the Italians in the middle 
ages, has never beenexceeded. Giannozo Manetti, the Florentine, was 
one of the most learned men that Europe ever possessed: he spoke Lat- 
in, Greek, and Hebrew: he translated the whole of the Psalms from the 
original, and he wrote a book in confutation of Judaism, exposing their 
misinterpretations of the holy Scriptures. ‘These sacred studies and the 
reading of the works of St. Augustin made him a theologian ; he consid- 
ered St. Augustin and Aristotle as the greatest men the world had ever 
seen; he had the whole work De Civitate Dei by heart, as also the Eth- 
ics of Aristotle, and the Epistles of St. Paul; and he asserted that theol- 
ogy ought to be the principal science of mankind. Raphael Maffei was 
another learned Tuscan of the fifteenth century: he passed the latter 
part of his life as a hermit in a cell covered with boards, sleeping upon 


* Gouget, Bibliotheque Francaise, tom. ix. 226. ft Id. tom. xvi, 111. 
+ Id. xvi. 34. | Dacher. Spicileg. tom. x. § Bibliotheca Cluniacens. 15. 


AGES OF FAITH. 69 


straw, feeding upon bread and water, and a few vegetables: he finally 
renounced all profane erudition, and wrote only the lives of saints. He 
founded and endowed a monastery of nuns, under the title of St. Lino, 
and was himself regarded as a saint. ‘The convents could bear testimo- 
ny to the love of learning which animated numbers of noble laymen. It 
was in the spirit of that age, when Cosmo de Medicis enriched with a 
library the magnificent Abbey of St. Bartholomew, near Fiesole, and 
presented another collection of books to the convent of St. Francesco, 
which was not far distant from his Caffaggiolo, situated in a picturesque 
wood in the pleasing valley of the Mugello, resembling those delightful 
groves which the poetic imagination has ascribed to Arcadia. In an 
early age, Cassiodorus, who was blessed, as Gibbon says, with thirty 
years of repose in the devout and studious solitude of Squillace, carried 
with him to the monastery of Monte Cassino, his own extensive library. 
An Italian author remarks, that flattery has had no share in the elegant 
representation which adorns the hall of the palace Pitti, from the pencil 
of John Mannozzi, where the Muses are painted as exiled from Greece, 
and meeting a courteous reception from that house; for the government 
of Florence was distinguished by the hospitable reception which it 
gave to the illustrious fugitives. When Raymonde Sebonde came into 
France, from learned and philosophic Spain, with the intention of visit- 
ing the University of Paris, he was stopped on his way by the city of 
Toulouse; for such was the enthusiastic admiration excited there by his 
renown, that the inhabitants forced him to remain, and absolutely de- 
tained him against his will. In the middle ages, were seen many kings 
who were men of learning and ardent admirers of all wisdom. What 
an admirable instance is that of Charlemagne surrounded by the eminent 
scholars whom he had collected from all nations. Whata zeal did he 
evince for learning! <‘*O! I wish,” he exclaimed one day while con- 
versing with Alcuin, ‘‘ that I had twelve clerks as learned and instruct- 
ed in all wisdom as were Jerome and Augustine!”’ when Alcuin replied, 
‘‘'The Creator of heaven and earth had not any more like them, and you 
wish to have twelve!’? Such was the esteem in which letters continu- 
ed to be held at the imperial court under another monarch, that the pres- 
ent of a book was received as an equivalent for a tax due to the crown. 
The abbot of Corby, in the year 847, wrote as follows to the king. 
‘Instead of a present of gold or silver for this festival I send a book on 
the Eucharist, which although small in bulk, is great in consideration 
of the subject. I composed 1 it for my dear disciple the Abbot Placide de 
Varin.”’ No sovereigns encouraged learning with greater zeal than 
Louis-le-Jeune and Philippe-Augustus. King John of France in that 
feudal age, evinced a great love for learning, and to his orders the French 
owed their first translation of Livy, Sallust, Lucan, and Cesar. Chris- 
tine de Pisan, writing the life of King Charles V. in which she adheres 
most rigidly to truth, divides the work into three parts, which are enti- 
tled, on the Nobleness of Courage, of Chivalry, and of Wisdom, for 
learning entered then in the ideal of an excellent prince, and offered 
them titles which they valued more than those of their royal birth, as 
in the instance of Henry of England. By order of King Charles V. 
some of the finest treatises of St. Augustine, as well as the whole Bible, 
the greatest part of the works of Aristotle, Cicero, and many other au- 


70 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


thors, were translated into French: and this king gave immense pen- 
sions to the learned men who were employed in these labours. Speak- 
ing of John the brother of Charles V. then Duc de Berry, Christine 
says, ‘Se délicte et aime gens soubtilz, soyent clercs ou autres, beaulx 
livres des sciences morales et histoires notables, moult aime et voulen- 
tiers en oit tous ouvrages soubtilment fais.”’* Of his brother, Lewis, 
Duce d’Anjou, she says, “il amoit les chevalereux et les sages cleres ;’’t 
and of his fourth brother, Lewis, Duc de Bourbon, ‘aime et secuert les 
bons chevaliers et les clercs sages { en toutes choses bonnes soubtilles et 
belles se délicte ; livres de moralitez, de la sainte Escripture et d’enseigne- 
ment moult luy plaisent, et voulentiers en ot, et luy mesmes par notables 
maistres en theologie en a fait translater de moult beaulx.”” Of Louis, 
Due d’Orleans, son of King Charles V. she says, ‘that often there used 
to be before him many disputations of great congregations of wise doc- 
tors and solemn clerks, when many cases would be proposed and put in 
terms of diverse things, and that the memory and eloquence he used to 
evince on these occasions were wonderful, as he replied to each of the ar- 
guments, not in a high and fierce style of language, but mildly and all in 
peace, so that it was beautiful to witness it.’’| King Charles V. was 
told on one occasion, that some persons had murmured against him for 
paying such honour to clerks, but he replied, «*‘One cannot too greatly 
honour clerks who have wisdom: for so long as wisdom shall be honour- 
ed in this kingdom, it will continue in prosperity, but if wisdom should 
be ever thrust out it will. fall away.” § The old writer, who collected 
the very joyous history of Bayart gives this testimony, that the Duke 
of Ferrara is a gentle and wise prince, ‘qui scet quasy tous les sept ars 
liberaulx et plusieurs autres choses mécaniques ;”’** and that the duchess 
is a most triumphant princess, being beautiful, good, sweet, and courteous 
to all kinds of people, and so learned that she speaks Spanish, Greek, 
Italian, French, and a little very good Latin, in all which languages she 
can compose.tt The Duke of Nemours, he relates, passing through a 
little town named Carpy, remained there with his knights two days, and 
was very well received by the seigneur of the town, who was a man of 
ereat learning in Greek and Latin literature: he was cousin-german of 
Picus of Mirandula, and was styled Albertus Mirandula, Count of Car- 
py-tt Picus of Mirandula, at the age of twenty-three, maintained at 
Rome certain theses, containing nine hundred propositions, drawn from 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic authors. 'The Emperor Ferdinand 
III. spoke a great number of languages, and could answer every ambas- 
sador in his own tongue.||]| The learning of these high princes was in- 
deed not always scholastic. It was sometimes acquired solely by inter- 
course with learned men. Thus the King Don Alonso of Naples used 
to retire after his repasts in the company of learned men, in order, as he 
used to say, to feed his mind after refreshing his body, and even Francis 
I. King of France, whose reign beheld a suspension of learning, without 
having studied in his youth, made himself, by means of similar conver- 
sation, qualified to speak on all subjects of importance. Christine de 


* Livre des Fais du Sage Roy Charles V. ii. chap. xii. Pw. Ads 
+ Id. iL. c. 14. | Id. ii. c. 16. § Id. part. iii. c. 14. ** Chap. xlii. 
tf Id. chap. xlv. ++ Id. chap. xlvii. \||| Savedra, Christian Prince, i. 51. 


AGES OF FAITH. 71 


Pisan, mentions that King Charles V. did not neglect this method, for 
being circumspect in all things, as she says, in order to adorn his con- 
science, it pleased him often to hear at his collations masters in theology 
and divinity of all orders of the Church, having them around him and 
honouring them greatly, having in the utmost reverence every spiritual 
father or wise person, of just and salutary instruction.* It would be 
hazardous to affirm that the chivalrous lords of feudal towers, like the 
modern sons of nobility, could always boast of having possessed a Phe- 
nix for their governor, but unquestionably in Catholic times, the clois- 
ter supplied true sages, whose conversation was able to form great and 
good men to administer justice and govern their dependants with benig- 
nity and firmness. It remains to speak of the character of the learning 
which was thus diffused and ardently pursued during the ages of faith. 
A modern French writer, treating on the fifth century, says, that not 
only did literature become wholly religious, but being religious it ceased 
to be what is generally styled literature. In the ancient time of Greece 
and Rome, men studied and wrote for the sole pleasure of studying, 
and of knowing how to procure for themselves and others intellectual 
enjoyment. Literature was devoted to the search of truth; and so, he 
might have added, it has again become, professedly, at least, in the 
modern societies in which men write and study, precisely as if no such 
fact as that of the Christian revelation had ever occurred; but during 
the ages of faith it was quite otherwise. Within the sphere of divinity 
and morals, men studied no more in order to search for truth, and ac- 
quire knowledge; they wrote no more for the sake of writing. Wri- 
tings and studies assumed a practical character. Men only sought to 
convert and regulate the purely speculative character of philosophy ; as, 
independent of religion, poetry, letters, and arts had disappeared. From 
not having well seized this character of the period, a false idea of it has 
been generally formed; men have concluded that it was a time of apathy 
and moral sterility, without any development of intelligences. But it 
is an error to suppose, that there was then no intellectual activity. On 
the contrary, adds this writer, there was much; only it was under a 
different form, and tended to different results. It was an activity of 
application. One is astonished at regarding a world of writings which 
attest the ardour and fecundity of those ages, and which still constitute 
a real and rich literature.t The leaves of modern books are exactly 
like a Protestant country, or some barbarous region where the light of 
Christianity has never shown; where all is secularized, and every im- 
age of religion effaced, excepting what belonged to the idolizing of 
nature. The old books introduce us, as it were, into a Catholic coun- 
try, where amidst beautiful woods and wild mountains, we find monas- 
teries, and crosses, and holy images of saints, constantly reminding us 
of our heavenly country. Men talk of literature becoming religious, as 
if that was an indication of its decline; and yet without the sanctifying 
influence of religion, when has learning ever assumed an amiable or 
even a dignified character? ‘* Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desin- 
unt,”’ said Seneca,t and Petrus Cellensis explains the invariable phe- 
nomenon connected with the manners of the learned, when he says, 


* Part i. c. 15. + Guizot, Cours d’ Hist. Mod. tom. ii. t Epist. i. 


72 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


‘‘ Literatura secularis inflat, si illam caritas non reprimat.”* But what 
a gracious tone did that charity impart to learning in the ages of faith? 
It is recorded of James, abbot of Villemoustier, in the eighth century, 
that if he ever heard one of his monks in reading place the accent on a 
wrong syllable, to spare the modesty of the reader, he never reprehend- 
ed him at the time.t But not merely the style, the whole object and 
motives of learning were changed, ‘*Quid tota series literarum aliud 
indicat, quam te ea que sursum suntsapere, non que super terram ?”’ says 
Peter the venerable abbot of Cluny, writing to his dearest brother Odo. 
Mabillon shows that learning was to be cultivated with no other view but 
to render men more humble and charitable, more hidden to the eyes of 
men, and more sensible to the knowledge of God; more fervent to love 
him, and more diligent to serve him.|| One was to study, but never in or- 
der to seem to be wiser or more learned than others.§ One was to write, 
but not for the sake of being always able to boast like Demosthenes, that 
he came forward in literature and science, in politics and theology, zearoc 
xat wovoce. Lt was often necessary to use much persuasion to induce men 
to publish their works. ‘There is a letter from the Monk Petrus Picta- 
viensis to Peter the venerable abbot of Cluny, exhorting him to this 
effect. «I know that I am very bold in daring thus to advise you, but 
I trust in your piety that it will pardon me. For, beloved father, I fear 
not a little lest from declining all vanity in study you should wish too 
much to remain concealed under this intention. You ought to take 
care, most discreet man, lest by avoiding the praises of men with too 
much caution, you omit those things for which the faithful servant in 
the Gospel deserved to be praised by the good householder. Consider, 
I beseech you, that if the holy fathers had written nothing formerly, but 
had only passed a good life in silence, they would not have gained such 
a multitude of people to God, nor would they have left with us such a 
sweet and celebrated memory. The study of writing has always dis- 
tinguished the abbots of Cluny from ancient times, so that if they do 
not write they have reason to blush for themselves as being degenerate 
and unworthy of their predecessors.”’** St. Anselm uses stronger lan- 
guage to encourage literary exertion. ‘There are some men,” he ob- 
serves ‘ignorant sinfully, who say, what use to retain this little? I 
shall never become wise from so small a thing. All who are not learned 
will not perish. There are enough of wise men in the world, enough 
of learned writers. ‘There is no need for me to fatigue myself: thus he 
speaks to his mind, and does not perceive that the ancient enemy sug- 
gests these things to him, that he may never study to be useful, that he 
may live in torpor and negligence, and so perish.”’tt These men had 
but one object in their studies, ‘In doctrinis glorificate Dominum,’ {tf 
the supremacy of which continued to be recognised till the last; for the 
first efforts of engraving and printing were employed to aid religion, of 
which we see examples in the Biblia Pauperum, and the Speculum 


* Petri Abb. Cellens, Epist. lib. ix. 7. 

+ Historia Monasterii Villariensis, lib. i. cap. 12. apud Marten. 'Thesaur. Anecdot. 
tom. iii. 

{ Epist. lib. i. 13. || T'ractat. de Studiis Monasticis Preefat. 

§ De Imit. lib. iii. 53. ** Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, 620. . 

tf S. Anselmi de Similitudinibus, cap. 54. tt Isa. xxiv. 19, 


AGES OF FAITH. 73 


Salutis, and the editions of the Latin Bible by Fust. All the learning, 
even of the laity, during the middle ages, partook of this sacred char- 
acter. Fleury mentions that the young Emperor Theodosius had a 
good library of ecclesiastical books, and used to converse with bishops, 
almost as if he had been one of their order:* and Christine de Pisan 
says, that King Charles V. of France was really a philosopher, that is, 
a lover of wisdom. He was a true inquirer after high primary things, 
that is, of high theology, which is the term of wisdom, which is noth- 
ing else but the knowledge of God and of his high celestial virtues ; he 
desired to be instructed in this by wise masters, and he caused many 
books of wise theologians to be translated, ‘*et de théologie souvent 
vouloit oyr.’’t 

The modern sophists condemn such learning in a prince, and require 
on the contrary that he should be instructed in the sciences of natural 
philosophy, as if a knowledge of botany or mineralogy were more con- 
ducive to perfect the art of wise government, than that of ethics and 
divinity, which would teach the end of all good government, the true 
interests of mankind, and what belongs to the various relations of men 
on the stage of the present life. How should the natural sciences con- 
stitute the proper learning for rulers, or legislators, or magistrates! So- 
ciety is not in a better or worse condition for their opinion on physics 
being true or false; there are always men whom they may consult on 
such questions, but their error in religion or morals may involve whole 
generations in incalculable evils. ‘The example of king Don Alonso is 
adduced by Savedra to prove the inutility of science in a prince, for he 
knew how to correct the disorders of the heavens, but not those in his 
state; he who, by the force of his genius, could ascend to the height 
of the celestial orbs, was not able to preserve a kingdom and an hered- 
itary crown. The Sultan of Egypt, ravished at so glorious a renown, 
sent ambassadors to him loaded with presents, and almost all the 
cities of Castille, in the heart of his kingdom, refused to obey him. 
The religious studies of the middle ages taught men how to govern 
themselves, and therefore enabled them to rule over others. Men would 
not have deemed it possible, during the ages of faith, that the fact of a 
religious direction having been given to the studies of the laity, could 
be adduced in subsequent times in evidence of their having been barba- 
rians. ‘They would have shrunk in contempt, as well as in displeasure, 
from any learning which was otherwise directed. Hec et a pueritia 
legimus et discimus, they would have confidently replied to any object- 
ors who should have proposed a different kind of learning. Hane 
eruditionem liberalem et doctrinam putamus. This was the learning, 
not for the priest alone, but for all Christians in time past, who, while 
they occupy themselves with learning, ‘“‘hane amplissimam omnium 
artium bené vivendi disciplinam vita magis quam litteris persecuti 
sunt.”’{ ‘This was the learning of those masters of religion whom our 
ancestors revered, of whom we might justly say, in the words of the 
Roman orator, ‘‘ that their wisdom seems to us so great, that those men 
are more than sufficiently prudent, who, we do not say follow their 


* Meeurs des Chrest. 307. f Livre des Fais, &c. Part iii. ¢. 3. 
t Cicer. Tuscul. liv. iv. 3. 


Vo. II.—10 G 


74 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


prudence, but who are able to perceive how great it was.”’ Do men at 
present forget, that the reason, even of the ancient philosophers, would 
have dictated similar language? ‘Let us inquire what say the priests: 
for I confess that I am vehemently moved by the gravity of their 
answers, and by their one and constant voice. Neither am I that man 
who, if he should seem to be more than others versed in the study of 
letters, would take delight in or make any use whatever of such letters 
as would tend to withdraw our minds from religion.’’ This, you reply, 
is the language of some bigoted disciple, when education was the mo- 
nopoly of the priesthood during the dark ages. Nay, most profound 
critic, they are the words of Cicero.” 

But, even in a mere literary point of view, what was the character of 
the learning of the middle ages? Truly I do not see on what grounds 
the men of later times have reason to despise it. Philosophers enu- 
merate three distempers of learning; the first, fantastical learning, the 
second, contentious learning, and the last, delicate learning: vain imagi- 
nations, vain altercations, and vain affections. Now I would ask these 
disparagers of the Christian school, whether, if we exclude these three 
kinds of learning, will there be found remaining such prodigious stores 
for the moderns to boast of, as to warrant their contempt for past ages? 
It is infinitely remarkable that Lord Bacon should have noticed this per- 
version of learning, as having been consequent upon what he calls the 
reformation: he admits that learning then became characterised by an 
affectionate study of eloquence: men began to hunt more after words 
than matter, and more after the choiceness of the phrase and the round 
and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the 
clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and 
figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of 
argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the 
learning of the schoolmen to be despised as barbarous 5 then were Cicero 
and Demosthenes almost deified, and young men allured unto that deli- 
cate and polished kind of learning, which induced Erasmus to make the 
scoffing echo, ‘‘ Decem annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone,’’ and the 
echo answered in Greek ‘‘ ove—ass.”’t Now whatever may have been 
the faults of the ancient learning, it at least never evinced the spirit or 
the tricks of the sophist or the pedant. ‘A good reader or student,” 
says Vincent of Beauvais, “ought to be humble and mild, and ready to 
learn from all, and he never should presume on the ground of his know- 
ledge, and he ought not to wish to seem to be wise before the time, 
pretending to be what he is not, and ashamed to appear what he is. 
He ought not to condemn instantly whatever he does not understand. 
This should be the discipline of readers.t There are some,” he con- 
tinues, “ who wish to read all things, but the number of books is infinite. 
Be not desirous of following where there is no end or rest, and therefore 
no peace; and where there is no peace God cannot dwell. Philosophy 
rejects a fastidious stomach, and invites the cheerful guest to a simple 
supper of few but good meats. There is a great difference between 
seeing the thing itself and only the books; for books are only poor 


(SGN a Tre 97 Vy 29 Ee a ee ee eee acca re ee ee en . ay < nae gener aanianica 


* Orat. de Haruspicum Respons. 9. + Advancement of Learning. 
+ Speculum Doctrinale, lib. i. cap. 28. 


AGES OF FAITH. 75 


monuments of knowledge, and contain only the principles for inquiry, 
which are to be pursued afterwards, and for that very purpose books 
are to be laid aside.’’* Mere book-learning distinguishes no great wri- 
ter of the middle ages. ‘*Some things which I have not found in 
books,” says John of Salisbury, ‘from daily use and experience of 
things, as if from a certain history of manners, I have gathered.”+ ‘The 
learning of the middle ages was Homeric, indicating personal acquaint- 
ance with men and things. Many of their great writers were them- 
selves wanderers. ‘Trithemius mentions a certain priest of Ireland, 
named Sedulius, a disciple from childhood of the Archbishop Hildebert, 
who might be said to represent them all, for he was a man exercised in 
the divine Scriptures, and most learned in literature, excelling in verses 
and prose, who left Ireland, passed into France and Italy, thence into 
Asia, and lastly, after visiting the shores of Achaia, returned to Rome, 
where he shone in admirable learning.t In the schools, indeed, were 
distinguished the superseminati, or those who were superficial, the 
pannosi, or those whose learning was all in scraps and collections of 
sentences, and the massati, or those who were solidly learned ; || but 
even to the two former belonged the grace of humility, and the merit of 
a sound judgment, of which the proof may yet be witnessed in the col- 
lections made by them which have come down to us, as well as in 
works of their own composition. The admirable Phillipe de Comines 
confesses that he is a man ‘who has no literature, mais quelque peu 
d’expérience et sens naturel,” which the Abbé Gouget justly remarks, is 
worth far more than learning. A certain tone of noble simplicity, not 
unconnected with those manners of the feudal hearth, to which I before 
alluded, was observable in the writings of such men. It is this which 
seems so admirable in Joinville, and Froissart, and Olivier de la Marche, 
and a multitude of others, to whom the following distich of the poet 
Panormita, addressed to Leon Batista the Florentine, might with justice 
be applied by every judicious reader, 


“ Cum placeas cunctis, raris pro dotibus, idem 
Tu mihi pro vera simplicitate places.” 


One is struck also in all their compositions with that characteristic, 
which a distinguished critic of our times praises in Dante, that lively 
and respectful faith, that laical docility which reigns amidst the magnifi- 
cent inventions of his imagination, and the boldest flights of genius. In 
general, the learning and style of the middle ages had a certain deep 
mysterious tone, unobtrusive, symbolical, and at an infinite distance from 
the pert familiarity and vulgar display which is so characteristic of mod- 
ern literature. ‘This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard,” says Hip- 
polita of the play, to whom Theseus replies in words that express the 
genuine spirit of all their beautiful and profound compositions : 


“The best in this kind are but shadows: 
And the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.”§ 


But what could imagination do for the popular literature of the present 


* Speculum Doctrinale, lib. i. cap. 33. + De Nugis Curialium, lib. vii. Prologo. 
+ In lib. ii. de Scriptoribus Eccles. || Heuffel, Hist. Scholarum, 376. 
§ Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. 1. 


76 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


age? Men in these days would have disdained the domestic famil- 
iar muse of Euripides, who, it was said, never wrote any thing but 
what all the world could understand and perceive at the first instant, 
and from whose dramas men could learn better skill even in the com- 
monest matters of household economy. ‘The muse of the middle ages 
was that of Auschylus, and critics, like him described by Aristophanes, 
might object to their style, “that it was not sufficiently clear and contin- 
uous, but that its expressions were only scamandars, or trenches, or the 
insignia of shields, and broken words, which it were not easy to put to- 
gether,” like crosses, and holy sepulchres, and hooded heads, shrines, 
vigils, dirges, nocturns, templars, and chivalry. The wise poet of anti- 
quity, however, leaves the clear popular writer in the shades, and brings 
back the dark and solemn A‘schylus, to save his country by the max- 
ims of his wisdom.* With respect to books intended for general circu- 
lation, many historical works, of the most solid and practical philoso- 
phy, were composed in the middle ages, in a simple but condensed 
style, that united the brevity of Tacitus with the clearness of Livy. 
Such, for instance, was that history of the English schism, transferred 
to the Italian, with a truly Roman gravity, by Bernardo Davanzati, in 
the sixteenth century. That profound thinker and parsimonious speak- 
er, who received from the academy of the Alterati the name of the Si- 
lent, was the first to show, in this curious history, that the language of 
Florence need yield to no other in brevity and weight. A most remark- 
able monument, though of a different kind, is the work which was com- 
posed by Paschasius Radbert, on the deeds of Wala, the Abbot of Cor- 
by, which, being written while the enemies of that holy man were alive, 
and during the reign of Charles the Bald, when it was dangerous to 
treat upon such a subject, fictitious names are employed, and the truth 
of history explained in the form of a dialogue, after the manner of Plato. 
Mabillon, who discovered this work, which he justly styles golden, in 
the library of St. Martin des Champs at Paris, inserted it in his Acts of 
the Benedictine Saints, where it stands an imperishable monument of 
the profound wisdom, the learning, the judgment, and the accurate 
knowledge of all human duties, combined with the deepest piety, which 
were possessed in the ninth century. Assuredly the author of this 
work stood in need of no useful knowledge that the men of our times 
could give him. Indeed, of the literary excellence of many writers of 
the middle ages some modern critics have had the courage to speak with 
justice. Guizot, for instance, concludes his review of Alcuin’s writings 
in these words: «‘I regret that I cannot enter more fully into the exam- 
ination of these monuments of so active and distinguished a mind. I 
seem as if I had but taken a glance at them, and if they were made the 
subject of our profound study, we should reap, without doubt, pleasure 
and advantage. Jn fine, this appears to me to be the general character 
of Alcuin and his works. He is a theologian by profession; the atmo- 
sphere in which he lives, and the public to whom he addresses himself, 
are essentially theological; and yet the theological spirit does not alone 
reign in him: it is also towards philosophy and ancient literature that 
his thoughts and works are directed. These also he desires to study, 


* Aristoph. Rane. 


AGES OF FAITH. 77 


to teach, and to revive. St. Jerome and St. Augustin are familiar to 
him, but Pythagoras, Aristotle, Aristippus, Diogenes, Plato, Homer, Vir- 
gil, Seneca, and Pliny, are also in his memory. The greatest part of 
his writings is theological, but mathematics, astronomy, dialectics, and 
rhetoric occupy him habitually. It is a monk, a deacon, the light of 
the contemporary church, but at the same time it is a scholar, and a 
classical scholar. We see united in him an admiration, a taste, or rath- 
er a regret for the ancient literature, and the sincerity of Christian faith, 
the ardour to illustrate its mysteries and to defend its power.’’ Of what 
learned and profound men might not the universities have boasted at 
their very commencement? What erudition appeared in the works of 
Gerson, John Raulin, Biel, Clavasius, and of innumerable others at Pa- 
ris ? in other universities, what great Platonists were beheld in Marsilius 
Fiscinus, Hermolaus Barbarus, and Picus of Mirandula? What great 
astronomers in the Cardinal Cusa, George Purbach, Regio Montanus, 
and Walter? What Grecians and poets in Merula, the two Strozzas, 
the two Philelphes? What Latinists and poets in Mapheus Vegius, 
whom some compared to Virgil, Andrelinus, who composed such beau- 
tiful eclogues, Ugolinus, who celebrated the victories of Charlemagne, 
Ravisius Textor, the author of that fine dialogue between the Pilgrim 
and Death, Collatius, who sung the calamities of Jerusalem? What sa- 
cred orators in Maillard and Menot, the Franciscan friar, who declaimed 
in French against the scandals of their age? What profane orator in 
Jean Lefevre, who so eloquently defended an unfortunate prince?) What 
historians in Paulus Emilius, the canon, who wrote a history of France 
in Latin, Robert Gaguin, who wrote a Latin history of the French mon- 
archy, the two Chartiers, John and Alain, Froissart, and Monstrellet, 
Juvenal des Ursins, Mathieu Coucy, Le Bouvier, Nicole Gilles, Jehan 
de Troyes? What philologists in Annius, Ureeus-Codrus, Angelo Po- 
litien, Beroaldus Brant, Alexander Min, respecting whose birthplace no- 
ble cities disputed? What lexicographers in Ambrose Calepin and 
Stephens? What grammarians in Valla, Lully, Niger, Sulpitius, Pero- 
tus, Tiphernes, Hermonius, Lascaris, Chrisoloras, Capnion, Androni- 
cus, Dalmata, for whom kings and republics contended? What civil- 
ians in Alciatus, Chopinus, Corvinus, Marculfus? In fine, what univer- 
sal geniuses, of whom Alphonso Tostatus, the Spanish divine, was so 
eminent an example, that he merited the epitaph,— 


“ Hic stupor est mundi, qui scibile discutit omne.” 


Examine the literature of these ages during any period, and take, for 
example, that which was produced in France alone from the fifth to the 
tenth century, and, as far as relates to the choice of subjects, it will be 
found more noble and philosophic, more conformable to the idea of lit- 
erature, in the sense of Plato and Cicero, and of the ancients generally, 
than even that of the nineteenth, with its libraries of novels, memorials 
of robbers and of persons of profligate renown, and catechisms to teach 
children political economy and arithmetic. In the fifth century there 
flourished in France, Sulpicius Severus, who wrote the life of St. Mar- 
tin of Tours, a sacred history, and dialogues respecting the monks of 
the East; Evargrus, who wrote disputations between ‘Theophilus, a 
Christian, and Simon, a Jew, and a dialogue between Zacheus, a 

G2 


78 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Christian, and Apollonius, a philosopher; St. Paulin, Bishop of Nola, 
who wrote epistles and poems, and a discourse upon alms; Cassien, of 
Provence, who wrote a treatise upon monastic institutions, and confer- 
ences upon the monastic life; Palladius, of Poictiers, who wrote a poem 
upon agriculture; St. Prosper, of Aquitaine, who wrote a poem upon 
grace, and a chronicle or universal history; Mamert Claudien, of 
Vienne, who wrote a treatise on the nature of the soul, the hymn of the 
Passion, Pange lingua; Salvien, who wrote a treatise against avarice, 
and another on the government of God; Sidonius Apollinarus, Bishop 
of Clermont, who wrote poems and epistles ; Faustus, who wrote a trea- 
tise on grace, and letters on points of philosophy and theology; Gen- 
nade, of Provence, who wrote a catalogue of illustrious men, and a 
treatise on ecclesiastical doctrines; Pomeerius, of Arles, who wrote a 
treatise on the contemplative life, and a treatise on the nature of the 
soul; St. Ennodius, of Arles, who wrote a panegyric of Theodoric, 
King of the Ostrogoths, a life of St. Epiphanius, letters, poems, and 
theological tracts; St. Avitus, Archbishop of Vienne, who composed 
two sublime religious poems, besides epistles and sermons; St. Cesari- 
us, of Arles, who wrote a treatise on grace and free-will, and sermons; 
St. Cyprian, of Arles, who wrote the life of St. Cesarius ; St. Gregory, 
Bishop of Tours, who wrote the ecclesiastical history of the Frances, on 
the glory of the martyrs, on the glory of confessors, lives of the fathers, 
and many theological works; Marius, of Autun, who wrote a chronicle ; 
Josephus, of Touraine, who wrote a history of the Jews; St. Fortuna- 
tus, Bishop of Poictiers, who composed sacred and profane poems, and 
lives of the saints; St. Columban, Abbot of Luxeuil, who composed 
poems, homilies, letters, and theological tracts; Marculfus, who wrote 
a collection of formula or models of public acts; Fredegaire, of Burgun- 
dy, who wrote a chronicle; Jonas, Abbot of St. Amand, who wrote the 
life of St. Columban; St. Ouen, Archbishop of Rouen, who wrote the 
life of St. Eloi; St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, who wrote the- 
ological works, sermons, and letters; Alcuin, Abbot of St. Martin of 
Tours, who wrote commentaries upon the Scriptures, philosophical 
and literary works, poems and letters; Angelbert, Abbot of St. Ri- 
quier, who composed poems, and a history of his monastery ; Leid- 
rade, Archbishop of Lyons, who wrote theological works, and letters ; 
Smaragdus, Abbot of St. Michael, who wrote treatises on morals, 
commentaries on the New Testament, and a great grammar; St. Benet, 
Abbot of Aniane, who wrote the code of monastic rules, and theological 
works; Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, who wrote instructions on the 
schools, poems, and theological tracts; Adalhard, who wrote the Stat- 
utes of Corbie, letters, and a treatise, De ordine Palatii; Dungal, of Ire- 
land, a recluse of St. Denis and a poet, who wrote upon eclipses; 
Halitgaire, who wrote a penitential, and a treatise on the life and duties 
of priests; Ansegisus, Abbot of Fontenelle, who collected the capitula- 
ries of Charlemagne and Louis-le-Debonnaire, in four books; Fried- 
gres, Abbot of St. Martin of ‘Tours, who wrote a philosophic treatise 
upon nothingness and darkness, and poems; Ermold the Black, Abbot 
of Aniane, who wrote a poem on the life and deeds of Louis-le-Debon- 
naire; Amalaire, of Metz, who wrote a rule for canons, and a treatise 
on ecclesiastical offices ; Eginhard, who wrote the life of Charlemagne, 


AGES OF FAITH. 79 


annals, and letters; Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, who wrote poems 
and theological treatises ; Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis, who wrote upon 
the patron of that abbey ; Doane, Duchess of Septimania, who wrote a 
manual of counsels to her son; Jonas, Bishop of Orleans, who wrote a 
treatise on the institution of Laics, and on the institution of a king; 
St. Ardon Smaragdus, who wrote the life of St. Benet; Theganus, of 
Treves, who wrote the life of Louis-le-Debonnaire; Walfried Strabo, 
Abbot of Reichenau, who wrote a commentary on the whole Bible, the 
life of St. Gall, poems, one of which was descriptive, entitled Hortulus, 
and several theological treatises; Freculfus, Bishop of Lisieux, who 
wrote a history of the world; Angelome, monk of Luxeuil, who wrote 
commentaries on the Bible; Raban-Maur, Archbishop of Mayence, 
who wrote fifty-one works of theology, philosophy, philology, chronol- 
ogy, and letters; Nithard, Duke of Maritime France, and monk of St. 
Riquier, who wrote the history of the dissensions of the sons of Louis- 
le-Debonnaire; Florus, of Lyons, who wrote theological treatises on 
grace, poems, and a complaint on the dismemberment of the empire 
after Louis-le-Debonnaire; St. Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes, who 
wrote on grace; Loup, Abbot of Ferriers, who wrote on the same, and 
also a history of the emperors; Paschasius Radbert, Abbot of Corbie, 
who wrote upon the Eucharist, and composed the lives of Wala and 
Adalhard; Ratramnus, who wrote on the Eucharist and on grace; 
Gottschalk, who wrote on grace; Otfried, monk at Weisembourg, who 
wrote a paraphrase on the Gospels in verse; Milon, monk at St. 
Amand, who wrote poems, one upon sobriety, and a pastoral entitled, 
the Combat of Winter and Spring; John Scot Erigenus, who wrote 
upon philosophy and upon grace, and the division of nature; Usuard, 
monk of St. Germain-des-Pres, who wrote a martyrology; St. Remi, 
Archbishop of Lyons, who wrote upon grace and free-will; St. Adon, 
Archbishop of Vienne, who wrote upon religion, and a universal histo- 
ry; Isaac, Bishop of Langres, who made a collection of canons; He- 
ry, who wrote the life of St. Germain of Auxerre, in verse; Hincmar, 
Archbishop of Rheims, who wrote theological treatises, and political 
works; the Monk of St. Gall, who wrote the life of Charlemagne; Re- 
mi, monk of St. Germain of Auxerre, who wrote a commentary on 
the Bible, and commentaries on the ancient grammarians and orators ; 
Abbon, monk of St. Germain-des-Pres, who composed a poem on the 
siege of Paris by the Normans in 885; Hucbald, monk of St. Amand, 
who wrote poems and lives of the saints; St. Odon, Abbot of Cluny, 
who wrote theological treatises, poems, and a life of St. Gregory of 
Tours; Frodoard, who wrote poems, and a history of the church of 
Rheims; Helperic, who wrote a treatise on the computation of time 
in relation to the ecclesiastical calendar; John, Abbot of St. Arnoul at 
Metz, who wrote lives of saints, and the history of John of Verdiere, 
Abbot of Gorze, in which he relates his embassy into Spain to Ab- 
deram, Caliph of Cordova; Adson, Abbot of Montier-en-Der, who 
wrote the treatise on Anti-Christ, which was so celebrated; Arnoul, 
Bishop of Orleans, who wrote De Cartilagine, being an essay on ana- 
tomical studies; Gerbert, Pope Sylvester II., who wrote works on 
mathematics and philosophy, on theology, poems, and epistles, which 
showed that the activity of men of learning was not abated by the pre- 


80 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


vailing opinion that the world was then about to perish, as the tenth 
century drew to its close. 

Literature has been said to be the expression of society: that of the 
ages of faith was thus holy and historical. Has it, on moral and philo- 
sophical grounds, any reason to fear a comparison with ourown? Men 
may have wanted the critical sagacity that could always detect impos- 
ture, and disengage the real facts of a narrative from what credulity and 
exaggeration had superinduced ; but insincerity can never be laid to their 
charge. ‘They wrote, in regard to truth, like Fluery, of whom Chateau- 
briand says he would rather die than be guilty of a falsehood. What 
Montaigne says of himself, applies perhaps to every author,—that he 
does not more make his book than his book makes him: and on this 
principle, an acquaintance with the books of the middle ages would lead 
us to conclude, that those who wrote them were among the holiest and 
the wisest men that ever lived in the tide of times. Besides these origi- 
nal works, the collections which were made during the middle ages, and 
the choice of authors, which we find invariably to have been formed 
with the soundest judgment, and in which the men of greatest science 
in our days have nothing to change, prove them to have possessed judi- 
cious and solid, as well as extensive learning. Such were those vast 
compilations of which the Margarita Philosophica, by an anonymous 
author, and the Speculum Naturale and Historiale of Vincent of Beau- 
vais, are examples, forming an abridgment of all the branches of human 
knowledge. ‘The compilation of moral and theological sentences, like 
those of the Abbot Eugipius and Louis of Blois, indicate prodigious re- 
search, and a true perception of literary beauty. That spiritual and 
affecting book, which was published at one time as the manual of St. 
Augustin, and at another as that of St. Anselm, or of Hugues de Saint- 
Victor, was, in fact, composed by some writer of the middle ages, 
whose name is unknown. The same is true respecting the book en- 
titled the Soliloquies of St. Augustin, which was written subsequent to 
the year 1198, as is inferred from the author having inserted in it sen- 
tences from the first chapter of the fourth Council of Lateran, held in 
that year. We have seen in a former place that the ascetical writers 
of the middle age wrote only to edify the faithful, and had no ambition 
to win the glory of writing well. ‘The rumour prevalent here,”’ says 
Louis of Blois, ‘‘ that the number of the heretics is daily increasing, has 
compelled me to treat on these matters more at length. Henceforth I 
have determined on writing and publishing nothing, since I have to pre- 
pare myself for a salutary death: the world is already full of books.’’* 
Concealing their names as well as their lives, they made no scruple of 
availing themselves of what others had said before them, when they 
judged that it was better than what they could themselves say, seeking 
in every thing only the greater glory of God. ‘The author of the Man- 
ual, indeed, in his Preface declares, that it is only a collection of re- 
markable sentences from the holy Fathers. 

Even on scientific subjects, men made a right choice of ancient au- 
thors, and had the no small merit of being able to distinguish what wri- 
ters possessed the greatest merit. In the middle ages, Dioscorides and 


* Ludovic Blosius, Epist. ad Florentium. 


AGES OF FAITH, 81 


Pliny were the only authors consulted for botany and the composition 
of medicines, and Galen was the great authority and guide of physicians, 
insomuch that Carden advises his pupil, when asked any irrelevant ques- 
tion by a patient, to reply, that Galen forbids him to answer that ques- 
tion,—as if the weight of his name was quite sufficient to put any one to 
silence. Now Baron Cuvier says, that Galen is the only natural philos- 
opher of antiquity who deserves to be placed at the side of Aristotle. In 
ages of faith it was not overlooked, that the anatomical and physiological 
writings of this great man are composed in a spirit of profound piety, 
that he begins by invoking the Creator, and never loses an occasion of 
leading his reader to consider the final Cause in the wonderful construc- 
tion of the human frame. What penetration did men evince in revering 
Plato for having taught that the soul was an emanation from the divinity ! 
How little reason have the moderns to ridicule them for so admiring Aris- 
totle, that they would always lift their cap when he was named! Baron 
Cuvier declares, that he never reads the Natural History of that philos- 
opher without being filled with astonishment at his genius and observa- 
tion. ‘The first complete Latin translation of Aristotle was given in the 
thirteenth century by Michael Scot, who had studied in Spain with the 
Arabs. It is not to be denied, however, but that of the phantastic learn- 
ing there were unhappily some examples, in the very ages when it was 
most clearly denounced, and therefore, when it ought to have been re- 
garded with the greatest aversion. Who has not read somewhat of those 
strange retired old men, who thought that in Nature’s infinite book of 
secrecy a little they could read,—who, in subterraneous vaults, worked 
incessantly at what was called the great work, those blowers and alchem- 
ists,—among whom poor Nicholas Flamel was unjustly reckoned by 
posterity,—and who, notwithstanding all their follies, used to be sup- 
ported by the alms of some devout though weak persons? or of those 
mysterious inhabitants of the cloister, like that clerk of fame who had 
studied in Padua, far beyond the sea, regarded on his return with such 
dubious reverence,— 


“As when in studious mood he paced 
St. Andrew’s cloistered hall?” 


Gillebert, Abbot of St. Bertin’s at St. Omer, was accused, by a proud 
disobedient prior whom he had deposed, of being an alchemist. John 
of Ypres, who wrote the chronicle of that Abbey, says, that he has been 
present when the Abbot Alelmus proved the metal, of which certain can- 
delabras and vases were composed that had been made and given by 
Abbot Gillebert, and that they were found to be of alchemic silver. Gil- 
lebert used to be called the golden Abbot, from the splendour of his 
works. ‘And since I have alluded to alchemy,” says John of Ypres, 
‘¢T entreat all and each one never to apply their mind to this art. For 
this art promises beautiful things, and gives few: it strongly attracts and 
fascinates men, and many are deceived by it. Trust one who has expe- 
rience,—for I who write this was deceived by it, and I have seen many 
similarly deceived. Nor have I ever seen any one who has attained to 
the true work, which is of itself probable, for the principles of this art do 
not agree with the principles of nature. Also, its end is plainly defec- 
tive, nor does a metal become good by it: witness Albert, in his book 

Vou. Il.—1} 


82 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


entitled Semita Recta, which he composed on this art, in which he says, 
‘By this mode gold is made better than all that which is extracted from 
the mines of the earth, in weight and colour, and fusibility, ductability, 
and malleability ; excepting that, as alchemic iron is not attracted by the 
loadstone, so alchemic gold does not cure the leprosy, nor by means of 
it is the heart of man made glad, and the wound which it makes swells, 
because it is not the gold of God.’ ‘These are the words of Albert.’’* 
Christine de Pisan mentions, that ‘¢ the wise King Charles, who singu- 
larly delighted in all men of science, heard that, towards Avignon, there 
was a speculative clerk who led a life of philosophy, and worked with 
great subtilty in the art of alchemy, in which it was said he had already 
attained to many fine and notable points. The said clerk had been a dis- 
ciple of Master Arnault de Villeneuve, who was a very solemn man in 
science, and who, it was said by some, had attained to the philosopher’s 
stone. The king, who desired to see all subtil things, wrote to him that 
he wished him to come to him, and that he would reward him well. 
The clerk, in his letters, written in very fine Latin, thanked the king 
humbly for the honour which he paid to him unworthy ; but in sooth, as 
he was a solitary man, speculative, and of strange manners, he was not 
fit to appear at court: he had no flattering accents on his tongue; he 
was too much at ease in repose, in leading a poor life, eating roots and 
leaves, and speculating in philosophy: as he was not covetous of other’s 
riches, there was no delight or wealth which could induce him to lose 
the repose and pleasure of speculation. ‘The king sent him a message 
to say, that he did not wish to deprive him of his repose, but to increase 
it if he could; and that, although God had given to him the charge of 
the office of temporal rule, his inclination and his desires were not bent 
upon hearing lying flatteries which are thus offered to princes, but to 
search into the points of truth and virtue. The clerk, seeing the benig- 
nity of the king, came to Paris, where the king received him with great 
honours, and heard him speak. He remained a short time, and then 
returned with many fine gifts.”’t 

Modern science is indebted for the knowledge of many important 
facts to these indefatigable and mysterious inquirers of the middle age. 
Though employed in occult, and therefore in sinful occupations, they 
were not without some influence, from the devout spirit of their times. 
‘‘The chemical philosopher,”’ says Sir Humphrey Davy, ‘should re- 
semble the modern geometricians in the greatness of his views and the 
profoundness of his researches, and the ancient alchemists in industry 
and piety, in keeping his mind awake to devotional feelings, that in 
becoming wiser he may become better.’’ If I did not fear to tire and 
offend the reader, I could relate some strange discoveries or professed 
inventions connected with these forbidden studies. Cornelius Agrippa, 
Paracelsus, Petrus Loyerus, Renodeus, Gregorius Tholosanus, Cardan. 
Capocchio, and many others, who thought that men might ape creative 
nature by a subtil art, recall sad examples of misdirected study. But it 
sufficeth to name them: we shall have occasion in a future place to speak 
of the superstitions of those ages, when there will be more excuse for 


* Chronicon 8. Bertini, cap. 49, pars x. apud. Marten. Thesaur. Anecdot. tom. iii. 
{ Livre des Fais, &c. iii. c. 22. 


AGES OF FAITH. 83 


citing Arbatell. For the present, let us follow the example of the Lady 
of Branksome, and send back the book to Michael’s grave. . 

It must be admitted that the sciences formed not the most favourite 
branch of study during the middle ages. As with the Spartans of old, 
the teacher who won most admiration, was not one who lectured upon 
the stars and the movements of the heavens, upon geometry, or the 
science of numbers, upon the power of letters and syllables, rythms and 
harmony of accent,—but it was one fond of antiquity like Virgil, who 
spoke of the generation of heroes and men, of the founding of colonies, 
and of the first establishment of cities, and in general, as Plato adds, 
mdone Tis agxatorcyiec.* Religion gave to history and to moral philosophy 
a charm and an importance which the natural sciences could never pos- 
sess ; and that is one reason why Catholic studies are generally so much 
more occupied with the former than with the latter, while those who 
pursue their opposite, having comparatively no interest in Christian 
history, which they are incapable of understanding in consequence of 
their false position, and finding but little encouragement from the an- 
cient philosophers of the Socratic or Pythagorean school, who, with the 
original traditions of mankind, are all against them, naturally direct their 
genius to the pursuit of the exact sciences, in which they find nothing 
contrary to the state of mind in which it is convenient for them to con- 
tinue. The mind of man, as Aristotle says, is naturally formed to em- 
brace truth ;t so that when that which is more immediately divine, as 
theological, is denied or rendered unattainable, it endeavours to supply 
the deficiency by scientific truth, by research into the causes and nature 
of material things. The heretics and schismatics in early ages, were 
known to apply with diligence to the natural sciences, as was witnessed 
in the Nestorians, who first propagated the science of the Greeks among 
the Persians, and other oriental nations. 

In later ages they have not been wanting in similar application to the 
study of the sciences; and in cultivating the Greek and Roman litera- 
ture, their efforts have been unwearied. ‘The Church, from the first 
ages, has been accustomed to see genius and learning in the ranks 
opposed to her. Even after Christianity had acquired a complete vic- 
tory, among the Greeks at least, the heathen party was still distinguished 
by the most commanding talents: it could boast of men worthy of very 
high admiration, whether we regard the extent of their learning or the 
elegance of their compositions. With respect to the witnesses, whose 
profession would lead us to suppose that they now, as formerly, came 
forward to accuse the wisdom of the ages of faith, I would not involve 
all in one similar sentence. There are in that number many learned 
and humane men, who would shrink from such charges, and gladly sup- 
pose themselves Catholics without the supposed humiliation of a Pali- 
node, many impudent, illiterate, light men, who come forward as in the 
days of Luther and the Puritans, to sustain them. But this I do say of 
all kinds of protestors,—TI ascribe science and classical learning to them: 
I concede the discipline of many arts: I do not deny them elegance of 
lancuage, the sentiments that belonged to noble birth, penetration of 
genius, and abundant eloquence. Finally, if they claim many other 


* Hippias Major. ft Arist. Metaphysic. lib. i. cap. 1 


84 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


merits, I do not object;—but the learning of Christian antiquity, and 
the humility which casts down all high thoughts, and brings them into | 
captivity to faith,—that race never cultivated. ‘They cannot have the 
Same encouragement to pursue Christian learning; for their labours 
must be intended to serve a party, or at the most, some one nation, 
whose theologico-political system they defend: whereas, the Catholic 
student had the infinite satisfaction of being able to consider himself one 
of an immense army spread over the entire earth, consisting of men 
who, without having ever seen each other, were all directing their 
respective abilities to serve, not any particular sect, or government, or 
nation, or rank of society, but the sacred cause of the universal Church. 
Moreover, learning in them would only serve to develope more stri- 
kingly the inconsistency of their system; for they could not but admire 
the writings of the men with whom it would make them acquainted ; 
and how painful would it be to imitate the inconsistency of those who 
eulogize Thomas & Kempis, and Fenelon, and St. Bernard, and others, 
without withdrawing the charge against the Church to which they 
belonged! Unhappily, some of their number have been tempted to 
claim possession of such men with consistency, by means of altering 
or diminishing the truths which they deliver, publishing St. Frances de 
Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life, corrected, as they say, from the 
errors of the Popish edition,—as if he had been originally one of their 
authors,—and cutting off the fourth book, of the Imitation of Christ, 
not perceiving that without that last part the three former are, in a the- 
ological, and even philosophic sense, inexplicable. Famous in the 
annals of literary deceit was the crime of Hiobus, a Lutheran, who, in 
the year 1528, published an edition of the book of Paschasius, Abbot 
of Corby, on the Eucharist, not only omitting whole chapters, but also 
adding and foisting in words and sentences of his own, in order to make 
that holy writer appear to speak his sentiments; but his perfidy was 
exposed by Nicolas Mameranus, who published, in 1550, at Cologne, 
an edition of the real work.* *'They who contrive how to propagate 
heresy under another name,” says Vincent of Lerins, ‘‘choose gener- 
ally the writings of some ancient man, more obscurely set forth, 
which, by the very ‘obscurity of its doctrine, may seem to agree with 
their own, so that whatever they propound, it may appear as if they 
were neither the first nor the only persons who think so; whose wick- 
edness I deem worthy of double hatred, both because they do not fear 
to give the heretical poison to others to drink, and also because they 
fan, with a profane hand, as it were, the quiet ashes of some holy man, 
defaming his memory, and perpetuating, by revived publicity, what 
ought to be buried in silence.”’+ In some instances, indeed, this con- 
duct may have arisen merely from a weakness which attaches itself to 
human nature, such as led the Turks formerly to maintain that Orlando 
was a Turk, from his renown having passed into Colchus, where it is 
more known than that of Jason and the Argonauts.t But this mode of 
appropriating intellectual riches, is foreign from the inheritance of the 
meek, and can have no security; while, on the other hand, imperfect 


* Mabillon, Prefat. in iv. Secul. Benedict. pars ii. 
ft Vincent. Lerinens. Com. cap. 40. + Huet, de Origine des Romans, 37. 


AGES OF FAITH, 85 


or ambiguous sentences were not a sufficient ground for them to aban- 
don their claims to great writers as having been in error, but, according 
to the advice of Facundus, they were warranted in interpreting, in a 
better sense, the writings of all learned men who were gone before in 
the peace of the Church.* Even without literary fraud, the learning 
of these proud choosers was often employed in self-deception and in 
misleading others; for ‘*he only reads with profit,” says St. Hilary, 
‘‘who expects the sense of the things said from the words, and does not 
impose it upon them,—who does not force that to seem to be contained 
in the words, which before reading he had presumed was to be under- 
stood.’’t In attempting to explain what was the doctrine of the Church, 
they worked at hazard, and without any judgment: respecting the Trin- 
ity, they would as soon have consulted the writers who had opposed 
Pelagius as they would have studied St. Athanasius, St. Gregory Nazi- 
anzen, St. Augustin, and St. Fulgentius, for the doctrine of grace, for- 
getting that, although the anti-Nicene or the Greek Fathers did not 
think different from the Catholic Church, still, not being obliged by 
circumstances to treat upon those questions, they only alluded to them 
in passing, and with less precision. In describing the doctrines and 
customs of Catholics, these modern historians wrote with as much 
knowledge as Tacitus evinced respecting those of the Jews, which he 
designates as sordid, detestable, and absurd.t They were betrayed into 
the most palpable inconsistencies, so as to speak in admiration of the 
solid piety of the founders of their ancient colleges in times of what 
they termed Popish superstition. Wondrous is the force of truth, cries 
Petrus Cellensis, which takes captive the adversaries unwilling and 
unaware, and drives them on to the snares of an unavoidable conclusion, 
when they are taken and entangled in their own words, speaking truth 
unintentionally, and expressing with their lips what they do not feel in 
their heart.|| Indeed, their endless concessions and panegyrics, in the 
same breath with the most unjust and horrible imputations, seem so like 
a total loss of intellectual conscience, that one ought to be less shocked 
at the old catalogue of epithets in use with the illiterate, or with the 
raving Burtons of old, than at these eulogiums. Meanwhile, the more 
noble adversaries of the Church, who scorn all dishonourable methods 
of appropriating intellectual glories, feeling such a sense of their poverty 
in respect to theological studies, are induced to substitute opinions and 
speculations for a study of tradition. 

Truly, in their histories of the Church, it is curious to see how soon 
they find themselves painfully struggling amidst rocks and sands, and 
with what signs of pleasure they escape to the passes where a heathen’s 
discourse would flow as smoothly as their own. ‘These modern philo- 
sophic historians of the Church insensibly fall into a style as ridiculous 
as that of the pedant in Moliére, who says, ‘You ought not to say I 
beg your advice, but I seem to beg it.’’ With them there is never any 
thing, but, it would seem, as if all their confidence were reserved for 
repeating the detected falsifications of a Robertson.§ Even those who 


* Facundus Hermianensis, lib. ix. de tribus Capitulis 5. 
+ S. Hilar. lib. i. de Trinitate. + Hist. lib. v. | Epist. lib. vi. 23. 
§ Library of Useful Knowledge, Hist. of the Church. 

H 


86 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


have a tone of sincerity, dwell only on the reasons for doubt, and con- 
ceal all the proof of truth, and thus reconcile themselves to clear and cer- 
tain falsehood. Lord Bacon himself remarked, that ** when a doubt is 
once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still than how 
to solve it, and accordingly bend their wits. But that use of wit and 
knowledge is to be allowed which laboureth to make doubtful things 
certain, and not those which labour to make certain things doubtful.’’* 
To combat these wilful doubters is the task prescribed to Bellerophon, 
to destroy Ximagay dussraxtrny.t There is more of unfolding the sails of 
an oration with them than of labouring at the oars of dialectics. Even 
the sententious Tacitus becomes loquacious when an occasion offers of 
calumniating the Christians. ‘They will always have the last word, 
and charity need not render the meek anxious to deprive them of this 
melancholy privilege. It belongs to the nature of man’s reasoning facul- 
ty, that he should be able to protract disputation without end, and this 
ability is unopposed when there are no fixed principles, or when those 
which have been produced as fixed, may be changed and dissolved in a 
moment, as the success of those who produced them may require. In 
general, the learning of the adversaries only furnishes them with nega- 
tions. Do they seem at length to take up a position? On your ad- 
vance, they involve it in a mist of unintelligible phraseology, and you 
will hear them singing the peon of victory. Methinks, like the old 
symbolica]l knight, who encounters the magical adversaries, the Catho- 
lic should only make the sign of the cross and pass on. Nor is it even 
necessary to have learning to remain unmoved at their bold proposi- 
tions. ‘They may appear to have an exact knowledge of an infinite 
number of minute facts, so as to know the shepherd better than if they 
were of the fold, for men in ignorance always affect to be very particu- 
lar, like the traveller in Plautus, who, while pretending to come from 
Asia, where he had never been, replies to one who asked him whether 
Arabia is in Pontus,— 
** Est: non illec, ubi thus gignitur, 
Sed ubi absinthium fit, atque cunila Gallinacea.”’t 

These graphic triflers light upon a false date, or a hasty and ambiguous 
word, and instantly rejoice like a hungry lion, who stumbles upon some 
great carcase of a stag or goat, and he will fasten upon it although the 
swift dogs and keen hunters are close to him: and so does the sectarian 
critic rejoice when he sees with his eyes something that will satisfy his 
appetite for censure and for doubt. ‘This discovery, he thinks, will jus- 
fy the schism of his ancestors; this inference will prove that the Church 
has fallen. ‘* Quis illas conclusiunculas: non rideat, quibus literatihomi- 
nes se simul et alios fatigant?”’ As ‘Tertullian says of the demon in pa- 
gan times, who employed against Christians both truth and falsehood, 
‘‘Qmnia adversus veritatem de ipsa veritate constructa sunt.’’|| ‘These 
polemic and historical compositions resemble those which Glaucus de- 
scribes, being formed of sentences exactly balanced and symmetrical, in 
harmony with each other, and having the same tone, according to the 
art of the sophists in accumulating genitive and other accordant sounds.§ 


* Advancement of Learning. + Hom. Il. vi. 179. + Trinum. iv. 2. 
| Apolog. § Plato de Repub. vi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 87 


Plausible books men may compose from ancient writings, by commit- 
ting faults against the letter and sense of the text, by the addition, sup- 
pression, and change of words, by the change of punctuation, by sup- 
pressions of phrases in the text, such as conceal what is necessary for 
understanding the author, which leave only a part known, suppressions 
of explanations, limitations, and essential exceptions, by extracts which 
make an author say what he never said, but the contrary to what he 
said, by extracts which unite what ought to be separate, and which sep- 
arate what ought to be united, by unfaithful statements, essential omis- 
sions in the recital of facts, by assertions which are false, or hazarded 
without proof, by acts given falsely as authentic, by extracts which 
have no relation to the title, by translations in violation of grammar, by 
alterations of sense in words, by addition, omission, transposition, and 
change, by treacherous expressions, contradictory to sense, redundant, 
deficient, inapplicable, malignant. By these and other kinds of falsifi- 
cation they may maintain the system of the moderns, and so still repeat- 
ing their despiteful song, condemn and vilify Catholic writers, but as 
Louis of Blois observes, in his mild and penetrating-style, ‘though they 
may say a great deal, and persuade many with specious words and vain 
eloquence, yet those who are truly humble, that is, who are humble in 
heart, they cannot seduce.”’** Meanwhile, there is nothing in the suc- 
cess of such labours to be compared to the pure and tranquil recom- 
pense of the meek ; there is nothing to conciliate esteem for the writer, 
even from the gentler spirits of his own party; he may have evinced 
sagacity, quickness, and diligence, but the muse of every clime rejects 
him; he is not an enemy, like Pandarus, to whom Apollo himself gave 
his bow.t ‘Those on his side may feel often tempted to entreat him, in 
the words which Bacchus addresses to the frogs, of whose monotonou 

chorus he is weary, 


“Grr, & ptrwdoy pévos, wradoube.’+ 


Confined and fettered at every step in the career of letters, he is deprived 
of the enjoyment of books that are most venerable and admirable, and 
compelled to resign to the meek the rich inheritance of the ancient 
Christian literature. At the same time, he may not be ignorant of any 
event in ecclesiastical history, for the most insensible and destitute may 
have read every thing. King Assuerius, having ordered Mardocheus 
to be fixed to the cross, and being unable to sleep that night, ordered 
that histories and the annals of former times should be read to him.| 
What history or book of annals have not the modern adversaries of the 
Catholic church read, while crucifying the Son of God afresh? Let it 
be remarked too, that an acquaintance with the literary productions of 
the adversaries is unquestionably far from being essential to a learned 
Catholic, but that the converse does not hold with regard to their inter- 
est in Catholic literature. «+ Mihi quidem,” I might reasonably say, in 
the words of Cicero, ‘‘ nulli satis eruditi videntur, quibus nostra ignota 
sunt ;’’§ or, as he remarks of Plato and other Socratic philosophers, 
that they are read by all persons, even by those who do not assent to 


* Epist. ad Florentium. f IL. ii. 27. { Aristoph. Ran. 240. 
| Liv. Esther. cap. vi. § De finibus, i. 


88 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


them, whereas no one ever takes in his hands Epicurus and Metrodo- 
rus, unless it be one of their immediate disciples ;* we also may appeal 
to the fact that all persons read the Catholic philosophers, while no one 
ever hears of Taylor or Jewell, unless it be within the immediate circle 
of their sect. I omit to speak of the ignoble crew, whose learning con- 
sists in the ridicule of holy things, in holding them up to the eyes of 
flesh, and concealing their relation to faith and to a supernatural exis- 
tence. Ah, that noble spirits should be joined to such a rout! Where 
license of that description is permitted, there is nothing so easy as to 
write books that will seem to indicate imagination, sagacity, and genius ; 
and the temptation is too strong for modern authors, to whom therefore 
the chronicles of the ages of faith are a mine of inestimable value, 
which they are incessantly working, with a diligence commensurate 
with their vanity or their avarice. To refrain from examining such 
productions is no real diminution of the inheritance of the meek, and 
certainly they should refrain. ‘It seems to me,” says St. Augustin, 
‘‘that studious and ingenuous youths, fearing God and seeking the 
happy life, should never dare to approach and follow confidently any 
doctrines which are exercised without the church of Christ, but should 
learn to judge them soberly and diligently, and that they should reject 
utterly and detest some things through suspicion of those who are in 
error, and that they should keep their studies separate, at a distance 
from the superfluous and luxurious institutions of men.”+ Who is 
ignorant that a new and most dangerous crew of writers has arisen in 
those professed historians and antiquarians of the French school, who 
have succeeded to the Ducanges, Mabillons, and Martenes, men who 
are Catholics in name and heretics in spirit, solemn libertines, followers 
of Epicurus, who with the body make the spirit die, of whose writings 
there is not a page that would not have served to Plato as a specimen 
of the sophist’s style, so far poetical that it would entitle them to use 
the language which Hesiod ascribes to the muses. 


<< iducey Leddece Trornd abyety erdpeorrty ofnoiee””? ' 
though not perhaps to complete the sentence, 
< iDurey &” sa’? ebércue, Garndee pubiocacdas.” + 


The superficial and frivolous nature of these compositions is illustrative 
of the justice of Aristotle’s sentence, that ‘it is the breast which makes 
men learned;’’ but the effects which are produced continually by their 
diffusion, might make men sigh for the comparative security from impo- 
sition which readers formerly possessed, when even the wisest and 
most learned men, like Mabillon, would not have presumed to publish 
any writing without the consent of superiors, and when other means 
were placed at every one’s disposal of knowing the real value of par- 
ticular works, besides what might be inferred from the authority of a 
company of traders, whose sole estimation of the excellence of a book 
depended on the supply of money which it would bring them. Books 
formerly, as well as persons, were canonized, that is, were admitted 
into the class of approved and authentic works. This usage of the 
word seems more ancient with the Greeks, for we find in St. Athana- 


* Tuscul. lib. ii. 3. + De Doctrina Christiana, lib. ii. 39 + 'Theogon, 


AGES OF FAITH. 89 


sius and others, the expression 4 xzven¢cuee @~riz. In the year 1308, 
the pope replied to the Friar Minors who desired a change in their rule, 
‘that the rule of St. Francis is canonized, and that he did not wish to 
violate it.’’ Infamous books were burned by the Apostles. It would 
be strange if they who were not to receive into their houses any one 
who brought not apostolic doctrine,* were allowed by the same law to 
accept their serpent books. St. Isidore says, ‘‘that to read impious 
books is the same thing as to offer incense to the demon; and theolo- 
gians demonstrate from history that the holy Church in every age has 
exercised jurisdiction in prohibiting their perusal.”’t Hence the books 
of the Arians, Manicheans, Priscillians, Pelagians, and Albigenses are 
no longer to be found, because they did not contain those doubtful 
things which men were to prove by inquiry. The liberty of St. Je- 
rome was compatible with his own maxim, “that it was better to be 
ignorant of some things than to learn with danger ;’’{ and where the 
error and danger were self-evident, Muratori says that it was due to the 
republic to pronounce sentence against books intrepidly, without further 
hearing.|| But to return to the learning of the avowed and less danger- 
ous adversaries of the Church. 

Having substituted speculation for the knowledge of facts, there is 
no longer occasion for the erudition which would be employed in ex- 
plaining the latter. ‘They are sufficiently skilful to be able to invent 
explanations for most difficulties, that would be only rendered more 
embarrassing by a greater portion of learning. When the Catholics 
appeal to history and to tradition for the truth of faith, the objector may 
feel for a moment at a loss, but he soon recovers himself, without the 
aid of learning, and replies in words, like those of the sophist of old to 
Socrates, ‘It is not difficult to find the solution of what you demand. 
I know very well, that if I were to be alone for a short time, and to 
look into myself, I could explain this to you, I could speak on this 
point to you clearer than all clearness.” ‘I am convinced, indeed,”’ 
replies Socrates, ‘‘that you will find this easily when you are alone.” 
‘It is just so: not at this present moment, but as I have said, when I 
shall have considered the point, I know well that I shall find the proper 
answer.’’§ A question, however, more important would be, will it seem 
satisfactory to him when on death-bed laid? for that is the moment 
which gives a value to all learning and to all pains. Will it be found a 
judicious reply when called upon to answer, not in a school of men, but 
before God’s tribunal, before him who gave so clear a command, and 
who vouchsafed so infallible a guide to truth? At present, who does 
not mark that even worldly interests enter to increase his difficulties, and 
Demosthenes says, ‘‘In deliberations when money is added to either 
side, as if placed in one scale of a balance, it sinks that down, and drags 
reason along with it; and he who does this is then incapable of reason- 
ing soundly and justly upon any question.”’** Hereafter we must all, 
for one great day at least, become good logicians. 


* II. John 10. 

+ Ligorio Theolog. append. iii. de prohibitione libror. Joan. Devoti Instit. Canon. 
lib. iv. 7. : 

¢ S. Hier. Reg. Monach. || De Ingen. Moder. lib. ii. c. 5. 

§ Plato, Hippias Major. ; ** Orat. pro pace. 

Vor. I1.—12 H 2 


90 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


But we have wandered too far upon the domains of this modern liter- 
ature, and mine art with warning bridle checks me. We have been 
drawn on to behold the nakedness of that desolated region, and we may 
well weep on leaving it. Yet, not in order wantonly to offend and 
afflict those among whom is many a spirit allied to innocence and joy, 
did we pass beyond the stretch of promise; for some of these whom we 
have now, perhaps, with weak words grieved, are gentle and humane 
writers, whose instinctive reverence, and I know not what kind of poetic 
affection, for all that pertains to the holy Catholic church, which they 
view from a distance only, should render them, even without reference 
to diviner motives, the objects of our tenderest sympathy, and sincerest 
love; but if honour be due to their genius, and affection to their noble 
capacities, truth and sincerity are no less a sacred debt which we should 
render to them, heedless of the loss and injury, and multiplied sorrow 
which may result too surely to ourselves. 

Returning now to the learning of the middle ages, we may observe 
that, in every sense of the term, this was Catholic, for it comprised all 
branches of human knowledge, although the divisions were few. ‘The 
first mention of the division of the seven liberal arts into the trivium 
and the quadrivium, the three of grammar and the four of physics, the 
knowledge of which formed the qualification for the degree of mas- 
ter of arts, occurs in the work of Martianus Capella, an African, who 
lived before the time of Justinian. ‘The monastic studies embraced the 
study of the holy Scriptures, of the holy Fathers, that of the councils, 
of the canon and civil law, of positive and scholastic theology, and moral 
theology, that of sacred and profane history, that of philosophy, that of 
what is termed humanities, including the study of manuscripts, inscrip- 
tions, and coins. Notwithstanding the predominance of theological and 
moral studies, we must not suppose that in every other men were mere 
children, and incapable of distinguishing popular errors, as some would 
conclude, from the city of Lucerne having mistaken some huge fossil 
bones for those of a giant, which it caused to be borne on its shield as 
such. The Carmelite friar Nicholas, who describes his pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem in the year 1486, was shown, when at Jaffa, one of the ribs 
of the giant Andromadus, which measured forty feet in length; ‘but I 
am of opinion,’’ he adds, ‘ that it is the rib of a whale.”’* ‘The map of 
the world, by Father Mauro of Camaldoli, in the convent of St. Michael 
in Murano, drawn in the year 1460, had anticipated, or at least predict- 
ed, the discoveries of the moderns in the old world. Assuredly, even in 
a scientific point of view, the learning of the middle ages is most remark- 
able. The great doctors of the school appear also in the capacity of 
naturalists. We observe in the writings of Albert the Great, all the sub- 
tilty of the Arabie philosophers. In his books on physics, he gives all 
the hypotheses that are still produced to account for the formation of the 
stones which fall from the sky: he has a work, which Cuvier esteemed 
interesting, in twenty-six books, on animals, written in the scholastic 
style, first considering them in general, then descending to particular 
species, and describing their anatomical and physiological and historical 
character. In this he enlarges on Aristotle’s work, and gives many new 


“ 


* F. xiii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 91 


descriptions. His catalogue of animals is taken from Aristotle, Pliny, 
the Arabic authors, and his own observation. By means of the com- 
merce of furs, he had seen many northern animals. Here occurs the first 
notice of the fish of the north seas, whales and herrings; he describes 
the shoals of herrings, so that it is an error to suppose that these shoals 
first began in the fourteenth century, for in the thirteenth he describes 
them. He speaks of birds also, and of falconry. Besides this creat 
work he composed a number of little treatises on anatomy and medicine, 
chiefly extracted from Aristotle. He has one in five books, on minerals, 
in which are many things relative to alchemy. St. Thomas Aquinas, 
the principal disciple of Albert, having studied with him at Padua, and 
in the same Dominican convent, appears also in the capacity of a natu- 
ralist. He wrote a commentary on the physics of Aristotle, in which 
alchemy plays a great part. He speaks of mercury as that which gave 
metallic qualities to metal, just as sulphur was considered the principle 
of combustibility in bodies. In philosophy he had an antagonist in Dun 
Scotus, a Franciscan, who was arealist. Each order continued to main- 
tain the favourite theory of their great respective doctors. Vincent de 
Beauvais, the Dominican, wrote Speculum Magis, or great mirror, in 
four parts, the first was Speculum Naturale, the second Speculum Doc- 
trinale, the third Speculum Morale, and the fourth Speculum Historiale, 
in which last are found many curious facts of considerable importance 
in the study of history. The whole is a vast collection in four enor- 
mous folios, that would form twelve such folios as the men of our days 
make, composed of extracts from all sources, and containing many trans- 
lations from the Greek. The first part is a universal treatise on natural 
philosophy, in the order of the six days of the creation, like the hexam- 
eron of St. Ambrose. It treats on animals, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, 
insects, on geography, on agriculture, on mining, on alchemy, on pre- 
cious stones, which were then in great request for churches, where, as 
we have already shown, are still preserved the most rare and valuable 
specimens. ‘The details and the style of this great work are richer than 
in the work of Albert the Great: he treats also on dreams, on proph- 
ecy,—in short, it shows that he embraced all parts of visible nature, and 
that he viewed them with penetration and judgment. Roger Bacon was 
a Franciscan, a native of Somersetshire. From Oxford he removed to 
Paris, where he met Grossetéte, with whom he returned to England. 
He was the first to teach experimental philosophy, in the pursuit of 
which, by means of the liberality of his pupils and others, he expended 
two thousand pounds. His books, however, contained expressions that 
gave offence, and he was persecuted by the general of his order, but 
Pope Clement IV., hearing of his merit, ordered him to be delivered, 
and desired to see his books. On the death of this pope, the general re- 
newed his attacks, but being raised to the popedom, he finally restored 
Bacon to full liberty, and bestowed on him the title of Doctor Mirabilis. 
Bacon, in his writings, treats on reading glasses, on the microscope, on 
the telescope, on concave and convex mirrors: he called for the reforma- 
tion of the calendar, which was afterwards made by Pope Gregory, and 
he showed the proper method, which was afterwards pursued in effect- 
ing it. He understood the steam engine and steam vessels. His alche- 
my was learned from the Arabians, and he professed, like all the other 


92 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


alchemists of the thirteenth century, the theory which has of late been 
supported by Stahl. He speaks also of gunpowder. It appears that in 
his time children used it commonly for their amusement, by means of 
different little instruments. It was employed in the mines of Germany 
as early as in the twelfth century. In the beginning of the thirteenth, in 
the third crusade, it was first employed for the purposes of war, against 
the castle of Theirs. Friar Bacon was one of the many religious men 
who, amidst the pursuit of science, retained all the spirit of his blessed 
order. Another example was seen in Father Alexander Spina, who was 
one of the first to develope the discovery of convex glasses to assist the 
sight. In the very ancient chronicle of St. Catharine of Pisa, he is 
called ‘*a humble and good man, who used to write down whatever he 
saw or heard, and who was the first to make known the use of glasses for 
the eyes.’’ In another chronicle of the same convent, it is said that he 
learned to make them without having any teacher. Some of the great 
mathematicians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were friars. Such 
was Friar Lucas Pacioli of Borgo, a St. Sepolcro, of the order of the 
Minors, who had no rival in his age. It was he who was the author of 
the first book of algebra known to Europe. William Becchi, an Augus- 
tin and Bishop of Fiesole, and Friar Leonard, a Dominican, were illus- 
trious in the fifteenth century, both in astronomy and mathematics. But 
in the science of these men we still trace the holy monk. If they culti- 
vate the physical sciences, the master was to attend more to the utility 
than to the curiosity of the matter. <‘‘Denique mente teneat id semper 
nobis preferendum esse quo prodesse possimus rurestri populo, cujus 
cure: et ministerio constitu solemus,’’ say the statutes of the order of 
Premonstré.* If Roger Bacon studies astronomy, it is in order that the 
calendar may be well arranged, to determine the festivals of the Church; 
if he treat on the magnifying glass, it is to rejoice in the consolation and 
assistance which will result to the aged priests for reading the books of 
their holy office. In like manner the old author of the poem entitled the 
Mirouer du Monde, which is a mixture of cosmography and natural his- 
tory, as also a history of the inventions of arts, says that Ptolomy the 
astronomer was of great service to monks, in furnishing them with the 
means of assembling together at the exact hour to repeat the office of ma- 
tins. ‘Let not the study of natural philosophy,” says Dionysius the 
Carthusian, ‘ delight you more than that of theology: quid enim prodest 
cognitio creaturarum sine dilectione ac debita veneratione Creatoris?’’t 
To the ancient philosophers such views would not have appeared un- 
worthy or ridiculous. The advantage which Plato ascribes to the study 
of astronomy is that it induces the soul to look upwards to the Primal 
Being and to what is invisible.t No one conversant with his writings 
need be told of the care which he takes to show that learning or study 
should not be pursued for any object of commerce or traffic, but in order 
to strengthen the soul and to convert it from things that are born to that 
which has existence in itself; for this, with him, is the great object of all 
learning and all science. 

Proceeding now to the sacred studies of the middle ages, there is 


* Statuta ord. Premonstratensis, cap. 9. art. 4. t De Arcta Via Sal. i. 
t De Repub. lib. vii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 93 


much that demands our attention; but I can only glance at their order. 
Positive theology consisted in the study of the holy Scriptures, of coun- 
cils, and tradition, but scholastic theology embraced a wider field, and 
admitted the illustrations of philosophy and other learning. 'Tayon, a 
priest of Sarragozza, was the first who composed a sum of theology: 
he lived in the middle of the seventh century. In the first book of this 
compilation, which has never been printed, he treats on God and his 
attributes; in the second on the incarnation, the evangelic preaching, 
the pastors of the Church and their flock; in the third on the various 
orders of the Church, on virtues and vices; in the fourth on the judg- 
ments of God, on temptations and sins; in the fifth on the reprobate, 
on the general judgment, and on the resurrection of the dead. St. John 
Damascenus was the first among the Greeks who published a sum of 
theology, which is entitled on the orthodox faith. St. Anselm was the 
first among the Latins who treated theological questions in a scholastic 
manner, and Mabillon admits that his writings, with the four books of 
Peter Lombard, can never be studied without deriving considerable 
advantage. A clear description and an admirable defence of the scho- 
lastic theology is given by Melchior Canus.* It consists, he says, in 
reasoning learnedly concerning God and divine things, from the sacred 
writings and institutions. The proud subtilties, and contentious dispu- 
tations, morose and tedious, of some doctors, are to be ascribed to the 
manners of evil men, not to the school, for it is a calumny to affirm 
that the majority were guilty of such childish trifling. The heretics, 
though they always affected to despise the school, rose up in arms 
against the scholastic theology. But they naturally regarded it with 
displeasure, because it restrained their license in disputation. It was 
the office of scholastics to illustrate and also to confirm, as far as possi- 
ble, from human studies, the doctrine of the Church of Christ, to spoil 
the Egyptians, to take the weapon from the hand of the enemy, and to 
smite off with his own sword the head of the proud Goliah, having an 
example of learning in St. Paul, and of wisdom in Moses and Daniel. 
A theologian, says an ancient writer, professes science from God, 
but whatever he meets with in reading or observing relative to jurispru- 
dence and medicine, and especially such things as have an affinity with 
theology, he gladly learns. For it is with wisdom as with virtues, all 
are branches of one stalk, according to the concordant sentiments of all 
noble theologians.t ‘*I confess,’’ says the blessed Dionysius the Car- 
thusian, ‘‘ that as far as I am able to discern after self-examination, J am 
not conscious of having undertaken these works through any vanity or 
for any vile end, for the sake of fame, or of temporal advantage; but I 
engaged in them in order that by occupying myself daily in the Scrip- 
tures, I might become able to live according to them, acquiring true 
humility, meekness and patience, which I greatly need. From my 
heart I return thanks to God that I entered religion so young, in about 
my twenty-first year, since which I have now during forty-six years 
applied myself to study. I have read St. Thomas, Albert, Alexander 
de Hales, Bonaventure, Peter of Tarentum, Avgidius, Richard de Media 


* De auctoritate Doctorum Scholasticorum. 
+ Instructio Novitiorum, cap. 22. auct. P. Joan. 4 Jesu Maria. 


94 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Villa, Durandus, St. Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, Dionysius, 
Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Cyrill, Basil, Chrysostom, Damascen, 
Betius, Anselm, Bernard, Bede, Hugo, Gerson, William of Paris, be- 
sides all the vulgar sums and chronicles, all the canon and civil law, 
many commentaries on both Testaments, and as many of the natural phi 
losophers as I could obtain, Plato, Proclus, Aristotle, Avicen, Algasen, 
Anaxagoras, Averroes, Alexander, Aphorabius, Abubather, Evenpote, 
‘Theophrastus, 'Themistius, and others; and, although the Scripture is 
clearly and copiously expounded by great doctors, and holy fathers, yet 
as St. Jerome saith, in the house of the Lord every one should bring 
what he can.”’* ‘The scholastic theology embraced the three ends of all 
true theology, the knowledge of God, the knowledge of celestial things, 
the prudence and the use of human things; and so far was it from re- 
tarding the study of the holy Scriptures, that it invited and excited men 
to prosecute that study.t But I shall have occasion to return to this 
learning in a future place, when it will be necessary to speak of the phi- 
losophy of the middle ages. At present, let us return to matters more 
immediately connected with literature, though we have not been wan- 
dering far from the subject; for we must remember that after all it was 
Dante, the scholastic theologian, who became the monarch of poets. 
And in fact the scholastic divines, in consequence of their sublime 
apprehensions of truth, frequently furnish lines that would be worthy 
of his highest song, of which circumstances poets were well aware. 
We find ‘Tasso complaining to his friend Aldus, that he had not sent 
him the sum of theology of St. Thomas, and asking for the works of 
St. Gregory Nyssen; and, in a letter to Vincenzo Malpiglio, expressing 
his intention to commence the correction of his Jerusalem Delivered, 
in the spring, he says, ‘‘I want a treatise of Pope St. Gregory, on the 
Hierarchy of the Angels,{ which I have not yet read, and a commentary 
on the Epistles of St. Paul, respecting the armour of light, for I hope to 
render my whole relation more solemn and venerable by means of alle- 
gory.’’| ‘To speak with contempt of the style and language of the 
ancient Christian writers, who give us in such abundance, the sweet food 
of sweetly uttered knowledge, has been a favourite artifice of modern 
writers, who endeavoured to win the renown of a more liberal erudi- 
tion; but persons of solid instruction may naturally feel the necessity 
for much caution in admitting the justice of their charges. It is not 
always so easy to determine respecting style. Origen maintained that 
a certain chapter was in the highest and most excellent style of Daniel, 
and Julian Africanus denied that it was worthy of him. Men com- 
plain that some historians of the middle ages should have written in the 
style of bards, such as the monk of St. Gall and Ermold the black, who 
wrote a work on chivalry, and a poem on Louis the Pious; but Aristotle 
says, that the style of the first prose writers of Greece was entirely 
poetical, as that of the noblest authors in all ages has been in a great 
degree. It is true the priest of the Teutonic order Nicholas Jeroschin 
in the fourteenth century, found no subject fitter for a poem than the 


* B. Dionysii Carthusiani de Arcta Via Salutis. Protest. ad Superiorem. 
T Melchior Canus, c. 1, 2. + Homil. lib. ii. 34. 
| Prosatori dal Sec. xvi. p. 468. 


AGES OF FAITH, 95 


contents of the old chronicle of the order by Peter of Dusburg which 
he accordingly versified; but modern critics are compelled to admire 
the spirit in which that work is composed. ‘ With what diligent cir- 
cumspection,”’ says Dusburg, ‘‘ the ancients and holy fathers committed 
to writing the wonderful works of our Lord Jesus Christ which were 
wrought by them or by their ministers is known to all; for they attend- 
ed to the words of Tobias, ‘quod opera Dei revelare honorificum est,’ 
whose footsteps I follow, lest like the useless servant who hid his 
Lord’s talent, I should be cast into outward darkness; therefore, I have 
written the wars which have been carried on by the knights of the 
‘Teutonic order.”? Voigt remarks, that this passage, as also the very 
title of another work, Gesta Dei per Francos, indicates that constant 
regard to Providence, which gave such a unity to their historical narra- 
tives, which are nothing but a wonderful relation of the combat between 
the good and the evil principle. Dusburg traces all enmities and sedi- 
tions to the malice of the ancient serpent, the enemy of the human race, 
who envies the growing prosperity of a Christian community, and 
incessantly labours to interrupt the peace of the church; so that his 
whole history is the combat between God and the enemy of light and 
truth.* The natural flow of their narrative often indicates the simple 
means which had been employed in collecting it. In the life of St. 
Liudger by Altfrid, there is mention of an old blind man named Bernlef, 
who was greatly loved by the whole country because he was affable 
and knew how to sing the acts and contests of the ancient kings.t And 
Adam of Bremen, one of the old historians of Prussia, says, that the 
Danish king Sweno, had retained in memory all the deeds of the barba- 
rians, as if he had them in writing, and that he used to relate them to 
him when he was compiling his annals. Wernbert, the celebrated 
abbot of St. Gall, the son of Adalbert, who had followed his lord to the 
war against the Huns, used to be forced when a little boy to sit and lis- 
ten to the tales of his father, and it was the conversation of this Adal- 
bert which afterwards supplied the monk of St. Gall with the materials 
for his history. These old humble chronicles of days gone by, need 
not have been so despised by the pretenders to classical propriety, who 
nevertheless committed an error in their title page, and wrote histories ~ 
of their own times.t 

With respect to the great learned works of the monastic and other 
Catholic writers, it may be remarked, that one is never shocked by the 
breaking out of personal vanity adding weight to trifles, and of secret 
private spite, suggesting malignant observations, and that while they 
analyze ancient traditions, they do not employ imaginations to destroy 
former opinions, nor do they insult the reader with a tone of wanton 
defiance drawn from the pride of scholarship. ‘They never wound 
the pious ear by a profane application of the most sacred words of 
Christ and his apostles to their own subject. ‘That detestable abuse in- 
troduced by heretics, which has passed into an example with modern 
authors, whose hearts are little alive to the holy delicacy of the faith, 


* Geschichte Preussens, iii. 613. t Mabillon, Acta 8. Ord. Bened. See. iv. p. 1. 
+ Historia est res gesta sed ab etatis nostra memoria remota. Cicero ad Heren. 
lib. i. 8. 


96 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


was absolutely condemned by the fathers of the Council of Trent. 
They never offer for literature personal contests like those fierce aca- 
demic squabbles of an Annibal Caro and a Castelvetro, who, as Varro 
would say, ‘volsellis non gladiis pugnant.”” ‘They have not the air of 
being in love with their own works, as if they could not survive the loss 
of them, like Terence, who is said to have died of grief because some 
of his translations from Menander perished at sea, when he was return- 
ing from Greece; nor can one find in them any trace of that jealousy 
which Petrus Crinitus detects in Plato and Xenophon, who never make 
mention of each other in their writings, though both disciples of Socra- 
tes.* Their style may have been unpolished, but it was not like that 
of a literature which seems made by machinery. It was living, and 
often endued with a force that astonishes, as when the fathers describe 
the last moments of Julian, and say, ‘he died in the disgrace of God 
and men.”? In all their writings they evince that modesty and rever- 
ence which appears so remarkably in Dionysius, who though an anti- 
quarian, and writing a most learned work on the antiquities of history, 
yet refused to enrich his work with information which religion forbade 
him to disclose, saying, it is not proper that I should write down those 
things which it is not permitted every one to see or hear of from those 
who have seen them.t Not that the same motives could have existed 
with Christians, but still there were many things which they would 
never expose to the common gaze of inquisitive men through respect 
for religion and humanity, through regard to private friendship, to 
the rights of hospitality, and to the initiations of their course in the 
schools. On the other hand, as was before remarked, they insert as 
well as omit some things, on account of their writings being intended for 
the eye of friends alone, on whose particular genius or experience they 
may have depended for the needful application or correction. ‘Re- 
member,” says St. Avitus, in sending his poem of consolation to his 
sister, ‘that this little book is only to be trusted to the reading of those 
who are bound to us by the ties of relationship or of religious vow. 
Scarcely, though constrained by orders, do I commit it even into your 
hands; when or how should I wish it to pass into those of strangers ?”’{ 
Another contrast which their writings present to those of later ages, 
consists in the absence of all anxiety to draw at every step political re- 
flections from history. Mabillon cites the words of a learned author, 
who says, there is no more visible effect of that wicked glory with 
which men are enamoured, than the vanity which they derive from the 
knowledge of politics. This disposition of mind which betrays their 
secret admiration for grandeur of rank, is one of the greatest obstacles 
to true wisdom: it perverts the understanding, and makes the mind irra 

tional. They wish to know princes before they know men; whereas 
they must first know men before they can understand princes.|| How 
injurious to their own intellectual character is the neglect of this maxim 
by those great modern writers with whom political opinions are the 
highest test of virtue, in whose eyes Plato is a bad citizen, and Demos- 


* De Honesta Disciplina, lib. 1. c. 7. + Antiq. Roman. lib. i, cap. 68. 
t In Libellum de Consolatoria Castitatis Laude Prefat. 
| De Studiis Monasticis, p. ii. c. 8. 


AGES OF FAITH. 97 


thenes a saint? In another respect also their idea of learning was well 
conceived; for it did not consist like that of many modern solitary 
writers, in knowing the titles of innumerable books and in quoting from 
them at random, without having ever heard their history or known what 
were the author’s life and actions, his particular genius, his object in wri- 
ting, and the circumstances of the time in which he wrote.* ‘This is the 
erudition of our young contributors to the libraries that are gradually to 
eradicate Catholicism and impart pure light to men, although to a scho- 
lar of the ancient learning, it is all but mere drawing-room display. 
‘*Circulatoriw vere jactationis est.” Unquestionably the great crities 
of antiquity might have found matter to censure and ridicule in some of 
the monastic compositions ; but it does not appear exactly reasonable in 
the moderns to affect their right of judgment, considering the little cor- 
respondence between the greater part of their own literature, and the 
models by which they would attempt to try them. ‘he praise which 
Caxton bestows upon Chaucer might be extended to many authors of 
the middle ages; for in fact he only evinced a characteristic feature of 
their whole literature in ‘‘ comprehending his matter in short, quick, and 
high sentences, eschewing perplexity ; casting away the chaff of super- 
fluity, and showing the picked grain of sentence, uttered by crafty and 
sugared eloquence, in writing no void words, but having all his matter 
full of high and quick sentence.’? But it will be asked, was not the 
language of these old writers barbarous and their Latinity execrable? 
Many distinctions are necessary before we ought to subscribe to such 
an opinion. On the rise of Christianity some innovations in language 
were unavoidable; much indifference to its refinement was natural, and 
almost of necessary consequence. ‘The Pagan rhetoricians complained 
that the Christian religion was effecting a revolution in grammar, and 
introducing many alterations into the Latin tongue. St. Augustin, who 
studied Cicero and Virgil with such care, though he showed the insig- 
nificance of their objections, was anxious to preserve the purity of the 
Latin language; but Arnobius altogether disdained the scruples of the 
grammarians, and confessed that in fact Christianity ought to introduce 
changes into the language, since it had changed the sentiments and 
views of men. Yet assuredly many writers of the middle ages, like St. 
Leo the Great, and St. Bernard, attained to an admirable erace and har- 
mony of style. ‘There were still men who could write treatises which 
have been mistaken for the composition of St. Augustin, and beauty of 
style was not excluded by that impressive unction which belonged to the 
ascetical writers, whose sweet and honied sentences disarm the severity 
of high crested thoughts. Nicholas of Clairvaux imitated the style of 
St. Bernard, so that it was almost impossible to distinguish it. Schle- 
gel even asserts that the Latin language was written with the same ele- 
gance in the eleventh century, as in the golden age of Augustus. The 
schoolmen, indeed, may have used new words in treating of new things, 
or rather of things new to the Latin tongue; but the Roman authors 
themselves had taken similar liberties, Cicero used the words Appiita- 
tem and Lentulitatem. ‘The mania for substituting classical Latinity in 
place of the terms consecrated by Christian usage characterized the 


* Mabillon de Studiis Monast. pars ii. c. 111. § 3. 
Von. I.—13 I 


98 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


learning of the period immediately previous to the pseudo reformation, 
when new versions were published of the Psalms, and even of some as- 
cetical works, as the imitation of Christ. Some wished to change Sal- 
vator into Servator, because the former does not occur in the writings 
of the heathens. ‘This was an old idea, and St. Augustin had made the 
just reply, ‘* Let the grammarians bark what they will about Salvator 
not being a Latin word: to Christians it is sufficiently Latin, provided 
it express rightly the truth of that article which they believe. TE admit 
that the words Salvare and Salvator were not Latin before the Saviour 
came, but when he came to the Latins he made them Latin.’’* With 
respect to the Latin which was known in secular society, there is no 
reason to conclude that it was wholly void of classical grace. The 
judgments at which presided the Viscountess of Béziers, and which 
were collected under a famous title, are said to have been pronounced 
in very good Latin. 

We have already seen on what grounds the holy fathers without 
hesitation made use of the heathen writings to explain or illustrate to 
the Gentiles the true religion, but we have not sufficiently shown what 
an influence this Catholic view of learning, which allowed men to claim 
as their own every intellectual good, continued to produce upon the 
literature of the ages of faith. When it was argued by some that the 
fathers had only quoted pagan authors in consequence of their living 
among pagans, but that in subsequent ages Christians had no occasion 
to consult them, the objection was refuted by showing that the faithful 
still lived among men who extolled reason, and that on that account an 
acquaintance with the writings of the pagans continued to be of the 
greatest importance.t The observation of Minucius Felix on this point 
was equally just in all times, when speaking of men who being aware 
of what they deserve, wish rather than believe that every thing will 
perish with their bodies, being hardened in their error by remarking 
the liberty which they enjoy in this life, and the incomparable patience 
of God, he adds, ‘and yet nevertheless, they cannot open the books of 
any distinguished man, they cannot even read the poets, without finding 
salutary warnings on this head; so profoundly graven is this thought in 
the heart of all men, that a day will come when the different disorders 
which at present reign will be repaired, and when Divine justice will 
reward every man according to his works.”{ St. Clemens of Alexan- 
dria recognized the fundamental principle of Christianity that the testi- 
mony of God is the basis of faith, in that passage of the 'Timeus of 
Plato, where he says, that there is one only way to understand truth 
fully, which is, by being instructed by God himself, or by those who 
are born of God.| ‘O man, magnificently humble and exalted by 
humility,’’ cries Petrarch, speaking of St. Augustin, ‘** who adorned with 
the plumes of others, does not insult over them, but while guiding the 
vessel of the Christian religion amidst the rocks of heresy, conscious 
to himself without arrogance of his own greatness, commemorates the 
rudiments of his youth, and though so great a doctor of the church, yet 
does not blush to have been led by the man of Arpinum who was tend- 


eee rs ee See Ce 


* §. Augustini Serm. 299. + Jamin, Traité de la Lecture Chrétienne. 
{ Cap. 35. || Stromat. vi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 99 


ing to another end.”’* St. Jerome, indeed, alluding to the day of judg- 
ment, says, in a rhetorical style, ‘‘foolish Plato with his disciples,’’t 
but he admits the principle on which the ancient learning was still 
studied, in citing some verses from the Aineid, adding, ** these things 
we take from a Gentile poet, that he who does not keep the peace of 
Christ may learn peace at least from a heathen.”{ It was only when 
alluding to some strange conceits of Abailard respecting the procession 
of the Holy Spirit, which he spoke of as being the soul of the world, 
that St. Bernard used that famous expression, that endeavouring to 
make Plato a Christian he proved himself a heathen,|| which will not 
justify our concluding that St. Bernard generally was insensible to the 
sublimity of Plato, or to the advantage of studying his writings; in fact, 
the passages adduced by Abailard from his works are the last that would 
give an idea of the excellence of his philosophy. Petavius says, in his 
book on the Trinity, that if we examine the more ancient heresies of 
which there is mention in Epiphanius, Philastrius, and others, we shall 
find that of almost all the doctrines which were contrary to the Catholic 
faith, but especially those concerning the Trinity, the foundation and 
author was Plato;§ but, perhaps, it would have been more correct to 
trace them to the men who abused Plato by endeavouring to prove that 
he had anticipated Christianity. Fleury, in his manners of the Christ- 
lans, makes the distinction between Plato with the old academicians 
and the Platonists of the age of Julian, who had little in common with 
the disciple of Socrates but the name; and he observes that when Chris- 
tianity arose there were some true philosophers who faithfully sought 
to discover truth and to practise virtue. In the ages of faith, before 
men had experience of an attempt to revive the heathen philosophy 
within the Church, we find them speaking with greater respect of the 
ancient sages, and inheriting with greater abundance and security the 
intellectual treasures of ancient times. «'This we ought to do’’ says 
Raban Maur, and his authority is decisive as to the opinion of these 
ages, ‘‘ when we read the Gentile poets, or when the books of secular 
wisdom come into our hands, if we find any thing useful in them we 
should convert it to our doctrine; but if there be any thing superfluous, 
concerning idols or love, or the care of temporal things, that we should 
pass over.”’** When Jerome Savonerola warned some learned men 
sitting in the Marcian academy at Florence, from the study of the an- 
cient philosophers, saying, that Plato tended to ins pire insolence of mind 
and Aristotle impiety, Petrus Crinitus relates that Picus of Mirandula 
smiled, and said in reply that his own studies convinced him that the 
Mosaic writings, and the Christian religion, in a great measure agreed 
with the ancient philosophy as contained in the works of Pythagoras, 
Mercurius, Zoroastre, and Solon.tt After the sixteenth century, the 
insane arrogance of pedants and the errors of heretics naturally inspired 
the faithful with greater timidity and induced them to abandon many 
associations which they had formerly cherished with innocence and 


eee Oe eee ee ee 


* Epist. Famil. lib. ii. 69. + Epist. v. t Epist. xv. 
ll Epist. exe. § De Trinitate, cap. 6. 

** Rabani Mauri de Institutione Clericorum, lib. iii. cap. 18. 

tt De Honesta Disciplina, lib. iii. 


100 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


enjoyed with meekness. A tone of gloom and severity which belonged 
rather to the porch of the stoics than to the meek and joyous family of 
the Church, infused itself even into the privileged fold, insomuch that 
Villani the historian complains that the taste for graver studies which 
occupied his age made the productions of their most celebrated poets 
appear frivolous. Before that era faith was too firm to fear any conces- 
sion which did not compromise its principles, and men never supposed 
it possible that truth could be confounded with exploded errors or endan- 
gered by recognizing the voice of primary traditions in the monuments 
of ancient learning. ‘hey enjoyed and honoured genius and every 
testimony to truth, so that if a poet, like that Athenian of old, had 
described them visiting the shades, he would have shown them like 
Sophocles approaching and kissing Auschylus and Plato, and giving 
them in their capacity of poets and sincere lovers of truth, the first 
place, and never questioning their right to it, but that same poet would 
represent the moderns like Euripides, who began to ery out and contend 
for it, appealing to the judgment of the vile majority of the rabble 
shades.* With what noble affection does St. Jerome speak of the great 
Origen, extolling the beauty of his immortal genius, and the depth of 
his researches, and at the same time acknowledging, though in a style 
that might move one to tears, that there were so many points on which 
he had erred.t The learning of antiquity harmonizes far more with 
that of the middle ages than with our own. When a youth at present 
leaves the schools where he has been familiarized with the sentiments 
of Socrates and Cicero, and the older sages, and on entering the world 
finds himself in the midst of what is called society, he perceives an 
abrupt transition which fills him with astonishment. His studies of 
heathen literature had not prepared him for this insolent contempt for 
all that is holy, this audacious mockery of goodness, this undisguised 
egotism: he finds in literature itself, a total contrast to every thing in 
the writings of the sages of antiquity, high and mysterious, generous 
and inspiring, to all that refined intellectual beauty which had so often 
exalted his imagination to rapture in solitude, and shed such a grace 
and sweetness upon those evening walks with early friends to which he 
looks back with such affection: he finds himself now among impious, 
ignorant triflers, centaurically vociferating, men whose philosopher is 
Voltaire, whose temple is the exchange or the tribune, whose festivals 
are a horse race or a review of the civic guard, whose reading is con- 
fined to journals, and whose highest boast is to be one of the majority. 
But to return to the learning of the middle ages. ‘ All things,” says 
John of Salisbury, “ offer themselves for the use of the wise man, who 
finds matter for exercising virtue in whatever is said or done: ‘nam et 
otia ejus negotia sunt :’’ he proceeds rightly in his own actions, and he 
philosophizes upon the vanities of other men.{ His own work, a monu- 
ment of the wisdom and learning of the eleventh century, is an example 
of this in its vast and curious erudition, and in the excellent judgment 
with which classical passages are quoted; for besides all the known 
classics it-contains extracts from a multitude of other books. More 


* Aristoph. Rane, 788. + Epist. xxxvi. et Catalog. Scriptor. Eccles. 
+ De Nugis Curialium, lib. ii. Prolog. ) 


AGES OF FAITH. 101 


than one hundred and twenty ancient authors are there cited. Peter 
of Blois, Archdeacon of Bath, in the twelfth century, cites passages from 
Aristotle, Boethius, Cato, Cicero, Tacitus, Frontinus, Galen, Gellius, 
Hippocrates, Horace, Justin, Juvenal, Lucan, Macrobius, Martial, Ovid, 
Persius, Plato, Plautus, Curtius, Quintilian, Sallust, Seneca, Statius, 
Suetonius, Terence, ‘Theophrastus, Livy, Valerius Maximus, Virgil, 
and Vegetius. He had become a priest only in his old age. Christine 
de Pisan had read Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, and all 
the Greek and Latin poets, though her chief study had been the writings 
of St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose. 
In the ninth century, Paschasius Radbert, who wrote the life of St. 
Adalhard, Abbot of Corby, applies a passage from the republic of Plato 
to his own subject, and makes with exquisite taste many quotations 
from the classical authors.* ‘Though the Gentile without Christ,’ 
says John of Salisbury, ‘had not laid hold of the fruit of beatitude, yet 
we see in them the shadows of virtues, as in the diligence of Themis- 
tocles, the gravity of Fronto, the continence of Socrates, the fidelity of 
Fabricius, the innocence of Numa, the modesty of Scipio, the patience 
of Ulysses, the abstemiousness of Cato, the piety of Titus.”t He 
shows that even the ancient poets convey lessons of salutary wisdom. 
Homer, he observes, chooses that his hero Ulysses should never be 
without Minerva, who signified prudence. Therefore, he underwent 
all horrible things without perishing; for he entered the cave of the 
Cyclops and escaped from it; he beheld the oxen of the sun and ab- 
stained; he passed into the infernal regions, and ascended from them; 
he sailed by Scylla, and was not seized; he touched Charybdis and 
was not retained, he drank the cup of Circe, and was not transformed; 
he visited the Lothophagi, and was not confined; he came to the Sirens 
and passed on his way.{ 
if I am not deceived, it will be interesting to a scholar to take, in this 
manner, an occasional glance at the great writers of classical antiquity, 
as if from the cloisters of the middle age. The monks and holy men 
who wrote books in those times, are very fond of applying the beautiful 
sentences of Cicero and Plato to their own subject; but then they con- 
trive to give them a tone essentially Christian, so as to be homogeneous 
with their whole composition, and they effect this by connecting or com- 
pleting them with sentences out of the holy Scriptures, so that the entire 
page is made to express the simple unadulterated faith of Christ. In this 
way the classical student learned to associate the brightest gems ot the 
ancient learning with the wisdom of Christians. If their lustre did not 
confer additional beauty on the thoughts, the practice will at least show 
with what innocence and piety the classical learning was cultivated in 
these ages of faith, An instance of this kind occurs in the old Life of 
Lietbertus, Bishop of Cambray, where the author describes the last dis- 
course of that holy man in language taken from the Treatise de Senec- 
tute, by Cicero, and from the Apology of Plato: but he does not allow 
his reader to depart without hearing still higher wisdom, for the conclud- 
ing words are these—‘* Unde ne censeas lugendam mortem quam im- 
nee aL prema bnemervent Cost UraerWe capers et ©" Bi > SR aa MeL ee ee ea mnPIC NPT GP Jr hy 
* Mabillon, Acta S. Ordinis Bened. Secul. iv, p. i. 
t De Nugis Cur. lib. iii. cap. 9. + Id. vi. cap. 28. 
12 


102 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


mortalitas consequitur: si enim credimus quod Jesus mortuus est et res- 
urrexit, ita et Deus eos qui dormierunt per Jesum adducet cum eo.’’* 
In this respect, the influence of classical learning upon literature was 
widely different from that which it exercised in a subsequent age, when 
men lost sight of the Christian character in their admiration of the writ- 
ings of antiquity. In many writers of the sixteenth century there are 
two characters—the Christian and the Philosopher. Led away by en- 
thusiasm for classical learning, they sometimes wrote like heathens and 
at others like devout Christians. In the same chapter and page of 
Montaigne, this separation is perceptible. Let antiquity appear, and he 
revives all its errors; let Christianity show itself, and he falls upon his 
knees. Cardan is another writer of this kind, yet in heart so Catholic, 
that he refused the offer of great advantages rather than reside in a Pro- 
testant country. ‘This accounts too for the contradictory opinions which 
have been held respecting them. Generally, through Heaven’s mercy, 
grace was given to these men, enabling them to die penitent and Cathol- 
ically, like Cardan, Polydore Virgil, and Montaigne. But they were 
not examples of the evil in its greatest extent. By degrees the classical 
Spirit predominated to such a degree as to form the very character of 
men, and to impart that uniform odour of Paganism which is so percep- 
tible in the modern literature. During the ages of faith, men did not cul- 
tivate classical learning with an indifference to its errors. Julian said 
that the Christians might persist in teaching the books of Homer, He- 
siod, Herodotus, Thucydides, and others, if they would persuade their 
disciples that there was nothing of impiety in these authors, and that 
they should imitate their worship,—an indulgence which was only re- 
garded as the addition of insult to injustice. But no exercise of ingenu- 
ity was more agreeable to them than the art with which they made use 
of the beauties of classical learning, without ever confounding its errors 
with the simplicity of Christian truth. Chateaubriand, in his Martyrs, 
has shown himself in this respect a true Christian poet; for though he 
employs Pagan Mythology, and all that is most severe and holy in the 
true religion, yet he never mixes them, or speaks of the former other- 
wise than as a Christian: yet his work was harshly criticised, on the 
ground of its combining irreconcileable elements, because his contempo- 
raries were ignorant of a legitimate use of heathen erudition. Had that 
work appeared in the middle ages, it would have been received with 
enthusiasm, because men were then accustomed to use heathen and 
Christian learning without confounding either. In fact, to the inherit- 
ance of the earth was attached much that was gracious and innocent in 
the manners as well as in the learning of the ancients. Christianity 
sanctioned no superstitious separations or distinction. 'The names of 
adults were not even changed in baptism, so that many saints retained 
the titles which came from false gods, as Denis, Martin, Demetrius; and 
on the sepulchres of the martyrs may be seen traced the ancient symbol 
of the heart. A holy Franciscan, Father John of Bordeaux, in his book 
entitled the Christian Epictetus, speaks of weak persons who, not com- 
prehending how grace corrects the faults of nature, blame the alliance 
which he seems to make in that book between the maxims of a philoso- 


* Vita Leitberti, Episcop. Cameracens. cap. 63, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. ix. 


AGES OF FAITH. 103 


pher and those of the Son of God. Knowing that heaven is not farther 
removed from the earth than human philosophy from evangelical wisdom, 
they cannot persuade themselves that there may be a union between 
these two sciences. ‘They are deceived,” continues the wise friar. 
‘¢'That is not impossible: for holy souls in Christianity have an admira- 
ble secret to unite them, which is the miracle of charity.””. The Church, 
in her solemn offices, reads from the works of one whom she names not 
in consequence of his fall. ‘The books of Wisdom are for her use, and 
she reads from them; but she is not authorized to claim their author, and 
therefore she declines pronouncing his name.* ‘All things are to be 
read,’’ says John of Salisbury, ‘‘in order that some, when read, may be 
neglected, some reprobated, some seen in transitu, and others to be more 
studied, as those which relate to political life, or to jurisprudence, or to 
ethics, or which conduce to the health of the body or soul. N othing,”’ 
he continues, ‘‘ should arrest the mind which does not tend to make man 
better. Even those things of which the use is necessary, if pursued im- 
moderately, become most pernicious. Who doubts that poets, histori- 
ans, orators, and mathematicians should be read, since without them 
men are ignorant and illiterate; yet when they claim possession of the 
mind as of right, although they promise the knowledge of things, they 
withdraw men from virtue and from devotion. Witness the vanity of 
Cicero! What darkness covers minds that are lifted up like his by 
praise! What fear comes upon them, what cupidity inflames them! 
‘These palliate adulteries, teach injustice, and propose examples of evil 
to the multitude. What fires from heaven, or inundation from the sea, 
or opening of the earth, cause such destruction of people as these occa- 
sion of manners! For reading alone, without the co-operation of grace, 
can never make man wise.t But with grace assisting him, all things are 
food to him, because, in all creatures, the Lord speaks to him the words 
of his salvation. All edification of manners is from the Lord, and all 
instruction of safety is, in a certain manner, the Word of God; and from 
whatever part truth is offered, it should be accepted, because it is always 
incorrupt and incorruptible. Therefore all things may be read if vice 
be avoided. What is even the odour of death to some may be profita- 
ble to life in others: all are more or less useful; and hardly can any writ- 
ing be found, from which, if not from the sense or words, there may 
not still be drawn something by a prudent reader. The Catholic books 
are read with more safety, but it is still very useful to be acquainted also 
with those of the Gentiles. Wisdom is as a certain fountain, from which 
all the rivers flow that water the whole earth, which not only form the 
garden of delights of the divine page, but also pass to the nations, and 
enrich those flowery regions with beauty and fragrance.”’t In this admi- 
rable passage the danger of such studies to some minds is admitted, to 
which we find allusion also in many other works; for the scholar of the 
middle ages sometimes found by experience, that the reading of the 
heathen poets was injurious to the purity of his soul. Such an instance 
is related in the chronicle of Centulensis, and the young man is said to 


a ee 


* Durandi Rationalis, lib. vi. 1. t De Nugis Curialium, cap. 9. 
t Id. cap. 10. 


104 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


have renounced secular learning ever afterwards, and to have devoted 
himself wholly to what was divine.* 

It remains only to notice briefly the character of learning, during 
these ages, in its application to secular objects. 

In early times medicine was studied by monks. Those of Monte 
Cassino employed the time that remained to them after their devout 
prayers, in the relief of afflicted humanity. In the beginning of the 
twelfth century, Faricio, a monk of Arezzo, was illustrious in medicine. 
Passing into Scotland, he became abbot of the monastery of Aberdeen, 
and was held in great repute for his medical knowledge by the mon- 
archs of that kingdom. We have already remarked the excellent judg- 
ment which was shown in the choice of Galen for the chief authority. 
Cardan says, that there had been in ancient times a distinction between 
herbalists and physicians,t It was chiefly in the former capacity that 
the monks practised. ‘Their motive was wholly religious, and the influ- 
ence of piety appeared in this as in all their other sciences. An exam- 
ple occurs in the chronicle of Sens, of which the author speaks as fol- 
lows :—** When I was in Argentine following the schools, there was a 
certain Master Henry with St. Thomas who was imbued with the art 
of medicine. He being made prior at Trouthenhouze, related to me, 
that a certain soldier named Rambald being attacked with a grievous 
sickness, sent to invite the prior to come to prescribe for him. On his 
arrival he found the soldier dangerously ill; so the prior said to him, 
‘My lord, if you believe me, you will first confess your sins, and | 
receive the body of Christ, before I attempt to cure you, because that 
will be a more important remedy for you.’’’t However, as the study 
of medicine was found to interfere with more important duties, a decree 
of the Council of Rheims, in the year 1131, prohibited monks and 
canons from pursuing it; and in that of Tours, in the year 1168, Pope 
Alexander III. declared, that. those who left their cloister to learn the 
art of healing or to pursue the study of law, would incur excommu- 
nication. 

Many of the most learned laymen, in the thirteenth century, were 
physicians. They studied with the Arabs, to which education may 
perhaps be ascribed the errors of Arnold de Villeneuve in matters of 
faith. He too had studied with the Moors in Spain, from whom he 
learned the art of making brandy, which they regarded as a medicine, 
being prevented by their law from using it for any other purpose, and 
which he was the first to introduce into Europe. His heretical tenets 
on points of faith caused his books to be burnt, and it was with difficulty 
that the Pope succeeded in saving those which had only relation to 
medical science. In the same age flourished Raymund Lulle, a man of 
noble race, senechal of the King of Arragon. He was a warrior, a 
poet, an alchemist, and a theologian: he passed into Africa to convert 
the Mahometans, and was rescued when about to suffer martyrdom. 
H{e was supposed to have succeeded as an alchemist in his labours to 
accomplish the great work. Even the muse of Tasso, like that of Pin- 


* Chronicon Centulensis, lib. iv. cap, 13. + Prudent. Civ. c. 92. 
+ Chronic. Senoniensis, lib. iv. cap. 34, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. ii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 105 


dar, does not disdain to mention such men ‘as the heroes who repelled 
all kinds of diseases ;’’* for after treating how Godfrey was wounded 
at the first assault of Jerusalem, we are told, 
“ Erotimus, born on the banks of Po, 
Was he that undertook to cure the knight: 
All what green herbs or water pure could do, 
He knew their power, their virtue, and their might : 
A noble poet was the man also ; 
But in this science he had more delight; 
He could restore to health death-wounded men, 
And make their names immortal with his pen.’’+ 


Bartholomew de Granville was another learned and noble layman of 
that age, who composed a work from the writings of Albert the Great 
and Vincent de Beauvais, which was entitled De Rerum Proprietate. 
Symphorien Champier, in later times, was another example of an excel- 
lent theologian and philosopher, a renowned poet, and an experienced 
physician, versed in all kinds of learning. We find the two-fold char- 
acter of these inen generally recognised on their tombs, as in the inscrip- 
tion on that of Neri, in the Neri chapel at the convent of St. Mary 
Magdalen de Pazzi, at Florence, in which the terms ‘‘ medico ac phi- 
losopho”’ are applied to him.—Celebrated in the middle ages were 
Fracastor, a physician, astronomer, and great poet, and also Speroni of 
Padua, a physician and philosopher, who was so loved by St. Charles 
Borromeo as to be admitted to his Notti Vaticane. In later times, the 
influence of piety ceased to distinguish the learning of the physicians, 
so that a striking contrast to the meek spirit of the theological and 
monastic disputants was seen in the writings of these lay cultivators of 
medical science of the sixteenth century, who resembled the classical crit- 
ics of modern times in making the margin of books their field of battle. 
The furious and ignoble combats of the anatomists arose when Veselius, 
from the schools of Padua and Bologna, sent forth a book to prove that 
Galen had described the anatomy of animals alone, and not of men, and 
Sylvius replied to him in terms of such outrage and insult. Veselius, 
the celebrated anatomist, physician of the Emperor Charles V. was 
known when at Madrid to have opened the body of a gentleman whose 
heart was found to palpitate, he having probably been only in a trance. 
‘The horror inspired by this event was so great, that it was generally 
believed he had been guilty of dissecting a living man. He was con- 
demned to make a pilgrimage to Palestine, and he died at Zante while 
on his return. 

The study of law was in an early age cultivated by the clergy. In 
the twelfth century, that of the Roman law, at Bologna, was instrumen- 
tal to the diffusion of learning. Gratian, who made the celebrated com- 
pilation, was a Benedictine monk, who lived there in the middle of that 
century. Many clerks studied the civil law. St. Philogonus, who 
succeeded Vital in the See of Antioch, in the year 318, had been an 
eminent lawyer, celebrated for his eloquence and learning, as well as 
for the holiness of his life. However, in the beginning of the four- 
teenth century, masters of law were not desired in the University of 
Padua. Innocent IV. found it necessary to issue decrees to check the 
Se oa een ee eee eh ee eS el 

_ * Pyth. Od. ii. + xi. 70. 

Vor. W.—14 


106 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ardour for this study, lest the Church should suffer injury, and: he pro- 
hibited any professor of laws to be admitted to an ecclesiastical dignity. 
Matthew Paris, writing in the year 1254, laments the prevalence of 
such studies and says, ‘¢ Almost all scholars now, forsaking grammari- 
ans and philosophers, turn-to laws; quas constat non esse de numero 
artium liberalium: artes enim liberales propter se appetuntur, leges 
autem ut salaria acquirantur,’’ an opinion very conformable with what 
was said in a later age of lawyers by the chancellor D’Aguesau, that 
with them to make one’s fortune and to do one’s duty, meant the same 
thing. Hugues de Bercy, a poet who lived in the days of Philippe- 
Augustus, is still more severe against lawyers, and says, ‘‘ Les loix 
apprennent tromperie.’? ‘Che Church commemorates the action of St. 
Andrew Avellin, who when a young man at Naples studying jurispru- 
dence, and engaged in pleading for private clients, finding himself in a 
moment of excitement guilty of uttering some trivial falsehood, and soon 
after coming by chance to the words of the sacred Scripture, ‘* Os quod 
mentitur occidit animam,’’ was seized with such compunction, that im- 
mediately from that hour he renounced all such engagements, and gave 
himself up wholly to the divine service. In consequence of the pre- 
script of Honorius III. there were no professors of law in the Univer- 
sity of Paris. In the Complutensian, Ximenes the founder took care, 
by a severe enactment, that there should be no place for such professors 
in after times. ‘The same prohibition was maintained in Hiedelberg, 
Prague, and other ancient academies of Germany. 

Without taking any side in this question, one may observe that, in all 
countries where the modern philosophy prevails, the importance with 
which this profession is invested, is certainly not a little remarkable. 
At the same time it would be unjust to overlook the noble character which 
judicial learning and manners assumed in the ages of faith. History 
records of Anthony Roselli, that learned and eloquent lawyer of Arezzo, 
that he was never induced to defend a cause which even appeared to 
him unjust. In the chronicles of the middle age, lawyers sometimes 
appear invested with almost a saintly character. ‘They are even assist- 
ed by visions. William Lydyngton being employed by the monks of 
Crowland to support some cause of theirs which was pending, saw in a 
vision by night, as he lay restless and concerned in reflecting upon the 
case, a certain reverend hero, clad in the garb of an anchorite, who de- 
sired him to take the refreshment of sleep, and added, that he would 
succeed in course of time. He concluded that it was St. Guthlake who 
had appeared to him, the patron of that abbey, who having been a great 
soldier, renounced the world and lived as a hermit in the fens.* It is 
impossible to regard, without awe and reverence, the solemn figure of 
Gothardus, rector of the law students, as he is represented on his tomb 
in the cloisters of the University of Pavia. Ranulphus, Bishop of Dur- 
ham, in the days of the Conqueror, wrote a book entitled De Legibus 
Anglie, which constitutes him the father of English lawyers. The 
clergy read in their office a sentence from St. Basil, that ‘fasting makes 
wise legislators.”*+ We have seen, that in the time of Charlemagne it 


* Hist, Croylandensis in Rer. Anglic. Scriptor. tom. i. 502. 
+ Homil. i. de Jejun. 


AGES OF FAITH. 107 


was imposed upon those who administered the law. When the Catho- 
lic archbishops and bishops, and mitred abbots, sat in parliament, men 
like Chancellor Morton, who had studied the canon law and the law of 
God, who were spiritually wise, and when the nobles who assisted 
them,—some of whom, perhaps, could only set their cross for their sig- 
nature,—legislated for England in conformity to their principles, there 
were acts of parliament passed and laws enacted, which have stood, and 
will for ever stand to all posterity, as models of legislative wisdom. 
The men of our age imagine that it would be well to change them: they 
attempt it, fall into pitiable mistakes, involve things in confusion, and 
become justly objects of public derision for their pains. 

Such is the general idea of the learning of the ages of faith which 
will result from a reference to their works. In the next chapter, the 
constitution and manners of schools, and the history of the rise of Uni- 
versities, will still further develope it, and can hardly fail to prove in- 
teresting and instructive. 


CHAPTER VI. 


‘THE institution of schools supported by public authority, in places 
secured and set apart for instruction, was unknown to the ancient 
Greeks; and with the Romans, military glory for many ages excluded 
all study of the liberal arts, so that it was not till the end of the first 
century of the Christian era that public schools began to be maintained 
in Rome at the expense of the state. ‘The school of Alexandria, in 
Egypt, was indeed of great antiquity. From the time of the Ptolemies 
it had been a seat of learning, boasting of that renowned museum found- 
ed by Ptolemy Philadelphus, which contained an ambulacrum, a place 
for disputation, and a house in which the sophists and grammarians were 
lodged. Among the primitive Christians it had become very celebrat- 
ed. St. Jerome says, that from the time of St. Mark the Evangelist it 
had possessed ecclesiastical doctors. There the mathematics were also 
studied by the Christians. In order to assist the Church in the compu- 
tation of the festivals, the Pagans themselves were induced to attend the 
lectures in the Christian school at Rome, near the baths of Titus. It 
was to a school of this description that the stoic Pantenus was indebted 
for his knowledge of the Christian religion, and afterwards he was 
placed at the head of the very school that had instructed him. St. 
Clemens of Alexandria used to boast that he had been a disciple of St. 
Pantenus, which he deemed a greater honour than to be a master him- 
self. In the school of Alexandria. flourished Origen, Heraclas, Diony- 
sius, John ¢«aéroves, and other learned Christian doctors. This celebrated 
school was destroyed about the end of the fifth century by the invasion 


108 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of the Mahometans. The school of Cesarea-Palestina was also cele- 
brated among the Christians. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Basil the 
Great, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, who studied and taught there, ren- 
dered it illustrious: but of its duration we have no certain evidence. 
St. Basil, departing from Caesarea to Constantinople, the school of the 
second Rome, soon became renowned, and here it is supposed was 
founded by Constantine a seat of letters, furnishing the first instance of 
a public academy endowed and instituted by authority. That of Rome 
was equally celebrated, as was also that of Berytus, which three cities 
had the exclusive privilege of having lectures upon the Roman law. 
The college of Bangor in Britain was established by monks before the 
time of Constantine. Shortly after the death of Justinian, Berytus was 
overthrown by an earthquake, and a fire destroyed what had been saved 
from that ruin. ‘The school of Constantinople lasted till the beginning 
of the eighth century, when it was extinguished by Leo the Isaurian. 
The school of Carthage also was spoken of by St. Augustin as the rival 
of that of Rome. ‘hat of Milan is celebrated for its library, and from 
St. Augustin having gone to it to teach rhetoric. In the fourth century 
anumber of schools were founded in Gaul by the edict of Valens and 
Gratian. That in the town of Cleves was eminent, which it appears 
had existed in the third century, where an Athenian had taught. Mar- 
seilles retained its academy, which was so grandly described by Stra- 
bo and Cicero. ‘The schools of Bordeaux, Tholouse, Narbonne, and 
Treves, are expressly mentioned from the epoch of the fourth century ; 
but the professors were only grammarians, both Greek and Latin, and 
rhetoricians, for no philosophers or professors of law were yet in Gaul. 

Of ecclesiastical schools, the earliest that are mentioned are those of 
Rome, Alexandria, and Nisibe. Such schools were either public or 
conventual. In the beginning of the sixth century, Cassiodorus, who 
from a Roman senator had become a monk, lamented the deficiency of 
these, compared with the secular schools,* and ascribed it to the wars, 
which raged in Italy. Edessa was soon after celebrated for its ecclesi- 
astical school. ‘The conventual schools were episcopal and monastic. 
Of these the first instance is that of Hippo, founded by St. Augustin for 
the education of young clerics, as a seminary to supply priests to the 
Church. Muratori describes the desolation of Italy, in consequence of 
the ravages of the barbarous Goths and Longebards, who nearly destroy- 
ed all learning, excepting at Rome and Pavia. As a remedy for this 
evil, the parochial schools by the clergy became general throughout Italy 
in the fifth century, which institutions thence passed into Gaul. ‘Thusa 
council in Narbonese Gaul, in 443, decreed as follows: ‘It pleases us 
that all priests, constituted over parishes, according to the custom which 
is so beneficially established in Italy, should have junior readers unmar- 
ried in their houses, whom they shall spiritually nourish, instructing 
them in the psalms and divine lessons, and in the law of God, that they 
may provide worthy successors for themselves, and receive from the 
Lord an eternal recompense,”’t In Spain first arose the schools of 
cathedral churches. This was in the beginning of the sixth century. 
Children offered by their parents were here to be instructed under the 


* Preefat. ad lib. divine et humane lection. t 1 Can. Concil. Vasionensis, ii. 


AGES OF FAITH, 109 


eye of the bishop,* and to dwell under one roof.t Yet the first Christian 
schools were always adjoining the cathedral, where was also the hospi- 
tal for the sick and for pilgrims, and there science and mercy met togeth- 
er, justice and peace kissed each other. The first schools of Paris were 
opposite Notre Dame, and adjoining the church of St. Germain |’ Auxer- 
rois. In the time of King Robert, the Palatine schools, so called from 
their being near the palace of Thermes, were on the ascent of the hill 
of St. Genevieve. The schools of Rheims, under Hincmar, in the ninth 
century, were celebrated. Young men flocked there from all parts. 
These schools produced great bishops, abbots, and chancellors of France. 
His successor Foulques excited emulation by his example, for he did 
not disdain to study with the youngest clerks.t In the year 970, the 
famous monk of Aurillac in Auvergne, Gerbert, was placed at the head 
of these schools, and King Robert, son of Hugues Capet, was sent to 
study under him by his mother Adelaide. Under Guy de Chatillon the 
youth of the city were also instructed, by the masters of the cathedral 
school, in the holy Scriptures and in the ecclesiastical computation. At 
Lyons I saw, adjoining the cathedral, a very ancient building, called the 
manécanterie. It was the cathedral school, erected by Leydrade the 
archbishop in the eighth century. ‘The name is derived from mane can- 
tare, to sing matins, for it was here that boys were instructed in the 
chaunt. In the eleventh century we find St. Maiolus, a young ecclesias- 
tical student, repairing to Lyons as to the most eminent school, the moth- 
er and nurse of philosophy, as St. Odilo calls it.| It was king Ina who 
founded the English school at Rome. We read in the Saxon chronicle, 
that in the year 816 the school of the English nation at Rome was de- 
sttoyed by fire. Alfred was a great benefactor to it. The title of one 
of the great hospitals at Rome is derived from its proximity to this school 
of the Saxons. In the time of St. Bernard it was usual for some, even 
of monastic students, to be sent to Rome. St. Peter, the venerable abbot 
of Cluny in the twelfth century, sent some of his disciples to Pope Lu- 
cius, to whom he wrote in these remarkable terms: ‘“ According to the 
will and command of your eminence, we direct from the bosom of Clu- 
ny’s cloister these beloved brethren and sons to the common father, yea 
to our and their especial father; we commend them to apostolic piety. 
For the cause of God and by virtue of obedience they leave their native 
soil, repair to a foreign land, and seek not to fly from death itself, which 
the Roman air is accustomed to inflict so quickly upon our countrymen ; 
so that like lambs they go to the sacrifice.”’§ In the sixth century also 
arose the schools of the new family of the Benedictines, which’ spread 
themselves over the whole western church. Of these the school of the 
monastery in the island of Lerins became first most celebrated. This 
was founded by St. Honoratus, and it produced Maximus, Faustus, Hi- 
lary, Cesarius, Vincent, Eucherius, Salvius, and many others. The 
school of Seville in Spain was also renowned for having produced the 
great St. Isidore. Of this school Mariana says, ‘that as if from a cita- 
del of wisdom many came forth illustrious both for probity of manners, 


* Concil. Toletano, ii. Can. i. + Id. iv, 
+ Anquetil, Hist. de Reims, i. 152, | Bibliothec. Cluniac. 282. 
§ S. Petri ven. Epist. lib. iv. 24. 

K 


110 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and for learning.’’* Isidore gave this precept for all similar schools in 
Spain: ‘‘ Cura nutriendorum parvulorum pertinebit ad virum, quem ele- 
gerit pater, sanctum sapientemque atque wtate gravem, informantem par- 
vulos non solum studiis litterarum sed etiam documentis magisterioque 
virtutum.’’ Until the time of Charlemagne letters found an asylum in 
England, and especially in Ireland in the monasteries. Henry of Aux- 
erre, in the life of St. Germain, which he dedicated to Charles the Bald, 
says that the Anglo-Saxons used to resort unto the monks of Ireland, for 
the sake of learning, and that they received from them the manner of 
forming their letters; and Bede is a witness that in the year 664 ‘* many 
of the noble and middle classes of England left their country and passed 
into Ireland, for the sake of divine reading, or of a more continent life, 
and some within the monasteries, others going about from cell to cell 
delighted in receiving instruction from masters, all whom the Irish lib- 
erally received, giving them daily food without price, as also books and 
instructors gratuitously.’’t ‘Then returning home, they enriched their 
own country with learning. Renowned schools and colleges were in 
the abbeys of Louth, of St. Ibar in the island of Beg Eri, on the coast 
of Wexford, in the fifth century, in the abbey of Clonard in Eastmeath, 
and of Rathene, in those of Lismore, Ross, and Bangor, of St. Mary at 
Clonfert, and in that of St. Ninnidius in the island of Dam-Inis in the 
Lake of Erne, and in the abbey of the isle of Immay on the coast of Gal- 
way.{ At this time Theodorus, a Roman monk, sent by Pope Vitali- 
anus, came to Canterbury, where he was made archbishop, having for 
companion the abbot Adrian. ‘These were both learned in the Greek 
and Latin. When Alcuin presided in the school of York, a crowd of 
scholars resorted thither from France and even from the farthest parts of 
Germany. St. Liudger was sent from Saxony to York to study under 
him, and remained there three years and six months. ‘Tanner admits 
that the English monasteries, till the moment of their destruction, were 
schools of learning and education, and that all the neighbours who desired 
it might have their children taught grammar and church music without 
any expense to them.|| In the abbey of Jumiéges, where our Edward 
the Confessor was educated, there were many schools for the monks 
and for seculars, in which rich and poor were alike received, and the 
poor could send their children, because they *were nourished at the ex- 
pense of the monastery.§ In the monastery of St. Benedict on the Loire, 
there were at one time five thousand scholars. Two descriptions of col- 
leges flourished within all the Benedictine monasteries, of which one 
was for lay youths.** The Scholasticus was the master of the school, 
who not only excelled in the science of the divine Scriptures, but 
also in secular learning, in mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, geome- 
try, music, rhetoric, and poetry. ‘Trithemius adds, that whenever an 
abbot found no monk in his abbey competent to discharge this office, it 
was no subject of shame to apply to some other monastery for a monk 
to fill it.tt No college in these ages was more celebrated than that of 


* Lib. vi. Rer. Hispan. cap. 7. + Hist. Anglic. lib. iii. cap. 27. 
+ Monast. Hibernic. 410. | Notitia Monastica, Pref. 

§ Hist. de Jumiéges par Deshayes. ** Mabillon de Studiis Monast. i. cap. 11. 
t{ Withem. in Chron. Hirsan. ad an.890. 


AGES OF FAITH. 111 


Fulda, of which Raban was preceptor. Even bishops did not disdain 
to study in the schools of learned abbots. Thus we read of Burchard, 
Bishop of Worms, who followed the instructions of Olbert, Abbot of 
Jumiéges, ‘a noble and powerful bishop did not disdain to submit him- 
self to the form of a disciple: and a humble and foreign monk did not 
fear to assume the part of a master over such a man.’’* In the Benedic- 
tine monasteries were always two divisions of boys for learning, forming 
the interior or claustral and the exterior or canonical schools ; the former 
for those that were dedicated to religion, the latter for seculars. The 
care which was expended upon all these boys is described by Udalricus, 
in the third book of his customs of Cluny, where he concludes that it 
would be difficult for any son of a king to be nourished with greater dil- 
igence in a palace than was the least boy of the lowest rank in Cluny. 
Many sons of kings were educated with the children of the poor in mon- 
asteries of Benedictines. Lothaire, son of Charles the Bald, was educa- 
ted in the abbey of St. Germain L’Auxerrois, Theodoric III. at Kala, 
Louis VI., Pepin, parent of the great Charles, and Robert, the second 
king of the third race, in the abbey of St. Denis. Even the exterior 
schools were under strong monastic discipline. Ekkehard the younger 
says, in the sixth chapter of his book on the monastery of St. Gall, that 
there were places of strict discipline, not only in the cloisteral but also 
in the external schools, from which, besides clerks, who were often there 
nourished, there came out many illustrious bishops. Joachim Vadianus, 
though an adversary, bears testimony that in the masters of these schools 
were required piety and erudition, the former being estimated by inno- 
cence of life and love of the divine worship, the latter by the judgment 
and excellence of the learning which was possessed. Preceptors were 
often chosen from the monasteries for the episcopal schools. ‘And in all 
these offices,” says Mabillon, ‘if they ever received any thing as a gift 
from the munificence of their disciples, they used to spend it in pious 
uses.’’ ‘Thus we read of Sigebert, that he applied many things to the 
use and ornament of the church of Jumiéges, which he had received as 
voluntary presents from the liberality of those whom he instructed. 
With Charlemagne arose the Palatine school, which was held in the pal- 
ace, of which the scholars were in the court. ‘This was so far ambula- 
tory, that wherever the emperor went to reside it established itself in 
the imperial palace. Louis-le-Debonaire and Charles the Bald continued 
to maintain the school in their palaces, in which had always presided 
from the time of Charlemagne the most learned monks, Alcuin, Peter 
of Pisa, Clemens, Claudius a Spaniard, Amalarius the Deacon, Angelo- 
mus the Monk of Luxeuil, and Scotus, who gave lessons on the holy 
Scriptures, on tradition and on the liberal arts.t The zeal of Charle- 
magne for learning is finely evinced in his admirable letter to Baugolf, 
Abbot of Fulda, and to other abbots. By means of Alcuin, it was said, 
that a new Athens had arisen in France. It is not denied that there had 
been, as we have shown, schools in Gaul before his time: for Bede 
speaks of Sigebercht, King of the East Saxons, having fled to France, 
and says, that when he returned to his kingdom, he instituted a school in 
imitation of what he had seen in France, in which boys were instructed in 


* Mabillon, Prefat. in v. Secul. Bened. § 3. + Id. Pref. in iv. Secul. Ben. § 8. 


112 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


letters, Bishop Felix himself assisting.* But the wars and troubles of 
the eighth century were a great obstacle to the progress of learning. The 
Council of Valence in the year 855, recommends the erection of schools 
for divine and human sciences, and the ecclesiastical chaunt, because 
from the long interruption of studies, ignorance of the faith, and the want 
of all science have invaded many of the churches of God. The exer- 
tions of the great Alcuin and other British monks under Charlemagne 
and his son Lewis, led to the extension and improvement of schools, 
Alcuin, amidst all his labours of composition, gave public lessons in the 
monastery of St. Martin at Tours, “‘I your Flaccus,”’ he says in a letter 
to Charlemagne, ‘according to your exhortations and good desire, apply 
myself to minister to some under the roof of St. Martin the honey of 
the holy Scriptures. Others I endeavour to inebriate with the old wine 
of ancient learning, others I begin to nourish with the apples of gram- 
matic subtilty. Some I try to illuminate in the science of the stars, as 
if of the painted canopy of some great house; | am made many things to 
many persons that I may edify as many as possible to the advantage of 
the holy church of God, and to the honour of your imperial kingdom.”’ 

In 813, a celebrated synod at Mayence ordered the clergy to admon- 
ish the people that parents should send their sons to the school whether 
in monasteries or in the houses of the parochial clergy, that they might 
learn there in the vernacular toncue, the symbol and the ‘ our Father,”’ 
and whatever was necessary for instruction in the Catholic faith.t 
There were parochial catechetical schools which were also gratuitous, 
and in another synod in 800, it was ordered that the parochial priests 
should have schools in the towns and villages, that the little children of all 
the faithful might learn letters from them; ‘‘let them receive and teach 
these with the utmost charity, that they themselves may shine as the 
stars for ever. Let them receive no remuneration from their scholars 
unless what the parents through charity may voluntarily offer.”’t In- 
deed, so early as in the fifth century, the clergy had not only cathedral 
schools, but also others in the country villages. In the year 529, the 
Council of Vaison strongly recommended the building of these country 
schools. Yet a late writer of the life of Caxton asserts that parochial 
grammar schools in villages were first established in the fifteenth centu- 
ry! In the monasteries there were the major and the minor schools. In 
the latter, boys were taught the symbol, the ‘‘our Father,”’ the Psalms, 
chaunt, arithmetic, and grammar. In the major schools the various 
branches of learning were cultivated, sacred letters, mathematics, music, 
poetry, the oriental languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic. The 
most celebrated were in the monasteries of Fulda, St. Gall, Hirsfeld, 
St. Alban of Mayence, Bec, Corby, Milan, St. Deny at Paris, St. Max- 
imus at Treves, at Rheims, Autun, Tours, Strasburg: but there were 
many others, a list of which is given by Launoi, in his book De Scho- 
lis celebitlbus a Carolo Magno in Occidente instauratis. Of Fulda, in 
the ninth century, Trithemius writes as follows: ‘There flourished 
there a most learned body of monks, under the abbot, Raban Maur. 
Their fame and memory were in great price with emperors, kings and 


* Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. c. 18. + Concil. Moguntini Can. xlv. 
{ Synod. Aurelianensis, anno 800, Can. xx. 


AGES OF FAITH. 113 


princes, not only on account of the sanctity of their lives, but also of 
their incomparable learning.”” Not only abbots sent their monks to this 
school, but also from all parts of Germany and Gaul, noblemen used to 
send their sons to be instructed by Raban Maur; and as he was most 
mild, he received them all with great care, and instructed them according 
to the age and disposition of each. ‘The necessity for episcopal schools 
was inculeated in the celebrated Council at Metz, under Chrodogang, 
shortly before the time of Charlemagne. The school was to be attached 
to the cathedral, where the clergy were to live in community under the 
bishop. ‘The fathers of the sixth Council of Paris in 829, petitioned 
the Emperor Louis to found three public schools in some three proper 
places of his empire, ‘that the labour of his father may not by their ne- 
glect come to be in vain, that the holy Church of God may gain honour, 
and the emperor an eternal memory.” What was the result is un- 
known. In 859, another council invokes pious princes and all bishops 
to provide for the support of schools of the holy Scriptures, and also of 
human literature, ‘that on all sides, public schools may be constituted 
for both kinds of erudition, divine and human.’”* The writer of the 
life of Bishop Meinwercus, describes the episcopal school of Paderborn 
as ‘ flourishing in both divine and human science.”’ Multiplied exer- 
cises of study occupied youths of good disposition and boys, all under 
claustral discipline. There were the trivium and quadrivium, music, 
dialectics, rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, astronomy, and geometry. 
There flourished Homer and the great Virgil, Crispus, Sallust and Sta- 
tius. It was a play there to make verses, and sentences, and sweet 
songs ; and of the beauty of writing and painting executed by these stu- 
dents, we see proofs to this day. A Council at Rome in 826, under 
Eugene II. ordained that there should be three kinds of schools estab- 
lished throughout Christendom, episcopal, parochial, in towns and villa- 
ges, and others wherever there could be found place and opportunity. 
In 823, Lothaire I. promulgated a decree to establish eight public schools 
in some of the principal cities of Italy, «in order that opportunity may 
be given to all, and that there may be no excuse drawn from poverty 
and the difficulty of repairing to remote places.” Among these were 
Pavia, Cremona, Florence, Verona, and Vicenza. In the tenth century, 
St. Gerard, Bishop of Toul, drew into his diocese several learned monks 
from Greece and from Ireland, who opened schools which produced 
some eminent men. At the same time, the fame of the school of Mag- 
debure, under Otheric, was spread through all Germany. It was here 
that St. Adalbert, the apostle of Prussia, was educated, a beautiful ac- 
count of whose holy youth, and of the affectionate diligence of his mas- 
ters, is given in the ancient chronicles of that city.t The Teutonic 
knights in Prussia used to send boys of talent into Germany, and espe- 
cially to that school, to be educated in Christian learning, and alms 
for their support used to be collected in Germany.{ Van Espen sup- 
poses that, from the eleventh century till the Council of Trent, the 
episcopal schools had fallen into decay.|| Alexander III. by various 
constitutions, had endeavoured to obviate this evil. The third Council 


a ee ee eee ee 


* Concil. Saponar. Can. x. t Voigt. Geschichte Preussens. i. b. 4. c. 
+ Id. ii, 293. || De Jure Eccles, part ii. Til. xi. § 6. 


Vou. I.—15 K 2 


114 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of Lateran, in 1179, says, “Since the Church of God, as a pious 
mother, is bound to provide that opportunity for learning should not be 
withdrawn from the poor, who are without help from patrimonial riches, 
be it ordained, that in every cathedral there should be a master to teach 
both clerks and poor scholars gratis.”’* This decree was enlarged and 
again enforced by Innocent III. in the year 1215. Hence, in all colleges 
of canons, one bore the title of the scholastic canon. Pope Innocent 
Il]. who with Honorius III. was most zealous for the increase of 
schools, extended the law to other churches besides cathedrals, that 
there might be a master to teach gratis. 

The formal establishment of the universities, dates from the thirteenth 
century ; but celebrated schools had existed long before, in the places 
where they were instituted. Joffridus, Abbot of Crowland, who suc- 
ceeded Ingulphus, sent monks to his manor of Cotenham, near Cam- 
bridge, who used to walk to Cambridge every day to give lectures in a 
barn, and in a short time they collected a crowd of disciples, so that 
soon the studies were regularly pursued as follows: Brother Odo, 
early in the morning, taught grammar to the younger boys: at prime, 
brother Terricus delivered to youths the logic of Aristotle, with the 
commentaries of Porphyry and Averoes: at tierce, brother William 
read the rhetoric of Tully and Quintilian: master Gislebertus, on every 
Sunday and Saint’s day, preached the word of God to the people, and 
on all week days he expounded before sext the text of the sacred page 
to learned men and priests.t Similar details might be discovered rela- 
tive to the commencement of studies in the other great universities of 
Naples, Bologna, Paris and Oxford, which were all established about 
the same time; for Europe then forming almost but one country, insti- 
tutions and manners followed every where the same impulses contem- 
poraneously. However, the universities of Padua and Perugia did not 
arise till a century later. In Spain, the three greater universities were 
those of Salamanca, which was founded by Alphonzo el Sabio, and 
afterwards favoured by the especial patronage of Queen Isabella, of 
Alcala, which was instituted by Cardinal Cisnero, and of Valladolid, 
which, through the patronage of the Austrian dynasty, rose to great 
eminence. ‘T‘he most distinguished of the other twenty-four lesser uni- 
versities of Spain, were at Sarragossa, Valencia, Seville, Grenada, 
Itruria, Cervera, Toledo, and Santiago. The word Universitas, signi- 
fied corporation, and did not necessarily imply universality of the sub- 
jects of study. At Montpellier and Salerno there were universities of 
medicine solely. The beginning of the fourteenth century was distin- 
guished by the multitude of colleges which were founded. ‘There were 
forty-two in the university of Paris alone. The schools of the Domin- 
icans and Franciscans were now found every where. At Paris, the 
ancient episcopal school in the Island adjoining the cathedral, was trans- 
ferred to the Mountain of St. Genevieve. 

The universities were rendered illustrious by the lectures of the great 
monastic doctors, most of whom were of noble and even of royal blood. 
Albert the Great studied successively at Padua in his father’s house, and 


* Cap. i. x. 
+ Petri Blesensis Continuatio ad Hist. Ingulphi in Rer. Anglic. Scriptor. tom. i. 


AGES OF FAITH. 115 


at Paris, where he gave public lectures on Aristotle in the year 1219. 
The place Maubert, is so called from this Magister Albert; for he was 
obliged to lecture in the open air, there being no hall large enough to 
contain his audience. In one of the courts of Magdalen College, in 
Oxford, may be seen the stone pulpit projecting from the wall, from 
which lectures or sermons were delivered in the open air. At Paris, a 
street in the quarter of the university mentioned by Dante, is still called 
the Rue du Foin, where the hay or straw used to be distributed to the 
scholars to furnish seats. Albert then retired to Cologne, as General 
of the Dominican order, and afterwards became Master of the Sacred 
Palace at Rome ; he also assisted at the Council of Lyons; wearied 
with his labours he returned to his convent at Cologne, where he died 
in the year 1280. The number of scholars at these universities was 
prodigious. Nearly ten thousand foreigners of every nation, and many 
of them very illustrious, were at the University of Bologna in an early 
age. St. Thomas of Canterbury and Peter of Blois, were students 
there. Pope Alexander HI. was the Professor of Sacred Scripture, 
when exalted to the Pontificate. ‘The masters and students at the Uni- 
versity of Paris were so numerous, that when they went in procession 
to St. Denis, the first ranks were entered into the church of the abbey 
when the last were leaving the church of the Mathurins in Paris. ‘The 
university on one occasion promised to send twenty-five thousand scho- 
lars to increase the pomp of a funeral. It was usual to study at more 
than one university. The great Pope Innocent III. had studied at 
Rome, Bologna, and Paris; and Alexander V. shone both at Paris and 
Oxford. Men were students till the age of thirty or forty. Guillaume 
de Champeaux, after having taught philosophy at Paris with great 
applause where Hugues and Richard de Saint-Victor were his disciples, 
became himself, at an advanced age, the disciple of Anselm of Laon, in 
order to study theology under him, after which he returned to Paris, 
where he was the first to establish a double school of theology, one in 
Paris itself, and the other in the abbey of St. Victor which he founded. 
On those ancient tombs of doctors in the cloisters of Pavia, the master, 
like Nazario, is represented instructing scholars who are themselves 
bearded men; and at the college of the Jesuits at Rome, shortly after 
its foundation, Dr. Martin Gregory says, that prelates and bishops, and 
other honourable personages used to sit out of the press at lattice win- 
dows looking into the school, hearing and writing down the lesson of 
divinity. The church commemorates a trait in the life of St. Camillus 
de Lellis, that in his thirty-second year, feeling the advantage that learn- 
ing would yield him in consoling the sick and dying, to which work of 
charity he devoted himself, he was not ashamed to enter into the first 
class of grammar with little boys and thence proceeded to study for the 
priesthood. The same is related of St. Ignatius Loyola. Sometimes 
the whole life even of a poet was cloisteral through his anxiety to benefit 
men by his writings, as was said of ‘‘ gentle Champier.”’ 


Tout ton vivant tu n’as fait aultre chose 
Que ta personne tenir tousjours enclose, 
Pour profiter quelque chose aux humains 
Tant que des livres tu as composé maints, 
Tu as parlé des sainctes et des saincts ; 


116 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Et au dernier, comment pour estre crains 
Et bien aimé de leurs nobles vassaulx 
Les princes doivent vivre soir et mains, 
Et supporter bonnement leur villains, 

De tout cecy tu as moult bien parlé 

Car le peuple ne doit estre foullé.* 


The jurisdiction enjoined by these new academies throughout Europe 
was drawn from the constitution of Frederick I. Barbarossa. By decree 
of Pope Clement V. in the Council of Vienne in 1312, the profession 
of Oriental languages was added to the ancient faculties for the purpose 
of providing missionaries to the east. At Rome, Paris, Oxford, Bologna, 
and Salamanca, the Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic, began to be gener- 
ally taught. Then arose the schools of the Jesuits, and after the Coun- 
cil of Trent, the episcopal seminaries were multiplied, in which it was 
expressly provided that the students should assist at mass daily. Some 
councils, chiefly Belgian, prescribed schools on Sundays and festivals 
after mid-day, that the poor children may be instructed in the rudiments 
of the faith.t 

The favour and indulgence shown by rulers to schools of learning 
may be traced to the immunity from gifts granted by the Cesars, Au- 
gustus, Vespasian and Adrian, to the professors of the liberal arts. Do- 
mitian seems to have withdrawn this dispensation, which when restored 
was restricted to Asia by Antoninus Pius.t Constantine the Great 
confirmed and increased all the privileges of learning, of whom three 
constitutions in favour of schools are in the thirteenth book of the 'The- 
odosian code. ‘This emperor was not the first to appoint salaries for 
the professors, since Vespasian, Adrian, and Antoninus Pius, are record- 
ed to have set the example, confining their patronage to the four sects 
of the Stoics, Platonists, Peripatetics, and Epicureans.|| To the mul- 
titude of students, who flocked from all parts to Rome in the fourth 
century, Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian gave rules and privileges 
which may be seen in the code of Theodosius. By this law, the stu- 
dents were forbidden to frequent theatres or taverns, and all whose lives 
did not correspond to the dignity of liberal things were to be beaten 
publicly and expelled. No student was to remain after the age of twen- 
ty, which prescription Keuffel justly regards as an instance of imperial 
jealousy most injurious to learning. ‘The discipline and privileges of 
the academy of Constantinople were similar. Theodosius raised pro- 
fessors of learning to the dignity of counts of the first order, a title 
invented by Constantine, and divided into three degrees of honour. 
For Constantine thought, that all who partook in the labours of govern- 
ing in acivil or military situation should be styled his companions. 
They were also raised to the dignity of the spectabiles which placed 
them next to the first, who enjoyed the chief honours in the empire. 
Julian decreed that the Christians should neither teach the liberal arts 
nor be received for instruction in them by pagan professors, with the 
exception of one whose name was mentioned, but this persecution did 
not last long. Justinian was illiterate, and no lover of learning ; but 
ai ce UE OE A ag 


* Gouget, x. t Espen in Jur. Eccles. p. ii. tit. ii. cap. 5. 
t Keuffel, Hist. Originis ac Progress. Scholarum inter Christianos, 33. 
| Vide Heineccii Antiquit. Rom. lib. i. til. 25. 


AGES OF FAITH. 117 


such was his zeal for building magnificent temples, that he took for that 
purpose the stipends which had been granted by former kings to the 
masters of liberal sciences. The Emperor Frederick I. in his famous 
constitution which is the base of university jurisdiction, gave several 
privileges to students and professors. At this time the dangers to which 
solitary students were exposed, travelling and passing into strange coun- 
tries, were so great, that by this decree it was made a peculiar crime to 
touch or wound any student or scholar travelling, or remaining in a for- 
eign land for the sake of learning. All such persons are placed under 
the especial protection of the emperor, who is most anxious to defend 
and favour with peculiar love those by whose science the whole world 
is enlightened and reduced to obedience towards God and to rulers who 
are his ministers, who make themselves exiles, for the sake of science, 
and poor from being rich. On occasion of a great sedition at Paris, 
between the town and the students respecting the price of wine, which 
led to a great interruption of scholastic exercises, Henry III. of Eng- 
land addressed an invitation signed with his own hand to the masters 
and to all the scholars of Paris, in which he says, ‘* Humbly compas- 
sionating the straits and tribulation which you suffer at Paris from an 
unjust law, and wishing piously to assist you in reverence for God, and 
his holy church; we wish to signify to you, that if it please you to 
pass into our kingdom of England, we will assign for your use what- 
ever city, borough, or town you may choose, and secure you all liberty 
and tranquillity.” More than a thousand in consequence removed to 
Oxford, and by order of the king the rate of lodging was not to exceed 
a certain sum. Some French authors suspect that the King of England 
excited the sedition in order to profit by it in gaining possession of those 
learned men. To the twelfth century may be traced the origin of the- 
ological degrees, but it was not till the year 1562, that the Council of 
Trent authoritatively established for the whole church degrees in theol- 
ogy and canon law. The degrees of universities were conferred by 
giving the chair, the book, the cap, the gown, the gold ring, and the 
kiss, and the profession of faith. The first signified the faculty of 
teaching others. ‘The book was presented open to signify that the can- 
didate must study with diligence, and then it was given into his hands 
closed, to signify that it was not only in books but in the mind that 
wisdom was to be retained. The cap belonged to the clerical office. 
The ring given to doctors signified the mystic marriage to science. 
The kiss was to denote the fellowship which should exist among the 
learned. The profession of faith was prescribed by Pius [V.* Great 
honour and pompous ceremonies belonged to universities. Foreign 
kings would assist as spectators before an assembly of five thousand 
graduates, which was the number at Paris when there were twenty-five 
thousand scholars. The grandeur of the purple yielded to the scholas- 
tic dignity. In the year 1476, the University of Paris refused to give 
the degree of doctor to a man for whom the kings of France and of 
Spain had requested itt ‘The zeal for these foundations continued in 
Catholic countries unabated. Lorenzo de Medicis, to facilitate the in- 
struction of youth, opened a college at Pisa, where he assembled the 


* Keuffel, Historia Scholarum. ¢ Historia Universit. Parisiensis a Bulzo. 


118 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


most excellent masters of Italy. There were at least eight universities 
founded in France during the fifteenth century, while nothing but the 
work of dissolution proceeded in England, though it had been immedi- 
ately preceded by Wolsey’s foundation at Ipswich. The last instance 
of the establishment of a university,was in the year 1547, when Charles 
of Lorraine, Archbishop of Rheims, uncle of Mary, queen of Scots, 
solicited and obtained from Rome the establishment of a university at 
Rheims on the model of that at Paris. It became distinguished for the 
piety as well as the learning of its masters and scholars. But the schools 
of the Jesuits were now combining the advantages of a university with- 
out its danger. ‘‘ Hast thou seen in Oxford, written over the school 
doors, Metaphysica, Astronomia, Dialectica, and so forth? So is it 
here within one college,”’ says Dr. Martin Gregory, speaking of that at 
Rome, shortly after its foundation by St. Ignatius. 

The literary meetings held in the convent of the Santo Spirito at Flor- 
ence, were the first embryo of academies in Europe; and the first aca- 
demy was Platonic. ‘The present Latin translation of Plato, and of the 
whole works of Aristotle, though defective, evinced the zeal of Cardinal 
Bessarion its founder for the study of the ancient philosophers. In this 
convent the monks used to discourse in Greek and even in Hebrew. 
These meetings originated with the learned friar Louis Marsigli, around 
whom men of letters used to assemble and enter into disputations. 

Such then were the ancient institutions of education for the propaga- 
tion of learning; for of others which belong to the history of modern 
foundations I find no trace excepting among the Turks, who were the 
first to have military colleges, as was natural under a religion which was 
to be propagated by the sword. The Christian princes had not followed 
their example even so late as in the age when Savedra wrote.* It would 
be in vain to look back to ages of charity divine, and honour high, for 
any institution resembling those schools from which the offices of religion 
were to be excluded as a doubtful thing, and which men were equally to 
fill with faith and heretic declension, sanctioning in the eyes of artless 
and unguarded youth by their intellectual ministry, and perpetuating by 
the associations of early life arising from it, error as well as truth. No 
mention here need be made of these, in favour of which philosophy hath 
no arguments though civil powers may think fit to legislate. At present, 
I return to the ancient schools and universities, of which we have now 
seen the rise and progress during ages when the object of education was 
to render souls innocent, to stand once more beautiful in their Maker’s 
sight. Many interesting characteristics of the former demand our atten- 
tion: for, in the first place, the situation in monasteries removed from 
the dissipation that may occasionally at least prevail in great cities, — 
yielding the healthful air of the country and the beautiful aspect of woods 
or mountains, where the scholar, in the sweet and silent studies of his 
youth, learned to associate lessons of piety and devout exercises with 
the love of nature, was peculiarly favourable for the purpose of educa- 
tion. The evening walk of the students of the Cistercian abbey of St. 
Urban, is a happy spectacle. The being able to feel at home in its vast 
halls, and galleries, and peaceful cloisters, and then to range through the 


* Christian Prince, ii. 406. 


AGES OF FAITH. 119 


noble woods which surround it, might seem almost of itself an educa- 
tion. ‘The importance of these first impressions is quite incalculable, 
and the wisdom of the middle ages recognised the necessity of attending 
to them. ‘* Colleges ought to be placed in the country,”’ says Bonald, 
‘‘ that there may be no external pensioners to introduce the corruption 
of the town within its walls, who might receive instruction, but who 
could not receive education like those lodged within the college. Sa- 
lubrity of air, innocence of manners, and habits of a country life, are 
advantages for which no city could offer compensation. Such were the 
ancient monasteries for the education of youth.’’* 

Lord Bacon remarks the need of places for learning, all tending to 
quietness and privateness of life, and discharge of cares and troubles. 
What is termed a character, may indeed be formed in the boisterous 
stream of the world, but a genius is fostered amidst the stillness and 
peace which enable the soul to hear the sweet voice of Nature. It was 
the general opinion of the learned in the middle ages, as of the ancients,t 
that education could best be administered ina foreign country. John of 
Salisbury cites the words of an old man of Chartres, describing the keys 
of learning to unfold truth to philosophers, 

“Mens humilis, studium querendi, vita quieta, 


Scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena, 
Hee reserare solent multis obscura legendo.” 


And he supplies this comment, ‘‘ For to the humble God gives illum- 
inating grace, enabling them to understand truth, and they despise not 
the person of the teacher nor the doctrine, unless opposed to religion ; 
and without this, all capacity of genius, tenacity of memory, and dili- 
gence of study, will only serve to lead men into greater error, as the swift 
horse sooner carries his rider from the way. Simplicity and anxious 
study to find the sense, attend humility: that a quiet life is necessary to 
wisdom, even the heathen sages taught; and this cannot be found with- 
out the necessaries of life, and on the other hand, without the absence 
of luxurious delights,—for the abundance of things extinguishes the light 
of prayer, and therefore joyful poverty is an excellent thing to assist 
studies, as many of the ancients also found. Philosophy requires a for- 
eign land, and sometimes makes one’s own country a foreign one, be- 
cause it engrosses a man wholly, and prevents him from being engaged 
in domestic concerns.’’{ And to the same effect speaks Vincent of Beau- 
vais, who says, ‘‘ A foreign land is one of the helps to learning and phi- 
losophy, because it does not suppose the mind to grow forgetful of its 
end, and it is the first of virtues to learn gradually to withdraw the mind 
from these visible and transitory things, that afterwards one may be able 
to relinquish them freely.’’|| To the young scholar in a foreign land, 
solitude is the mother of tears and piety. Savedra, from the judgment of 
his chivalrous lore, goes so far as to say, that youth hardly ever succeeds 
in its own country: friends and relations render it too insolent; but in 
foreign lands the case is otherwise, for necessity renders it there more 
circumspect, and obliges it to form its manners to gentleness, to concili- 
ate favour. In his own country a young man feels more free and more 


* Legislat. Primit. liv. iii. 63. t Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita cap. v. 
t De Nugis Curialium, lib. vii. cap. 13. | Speculum Doctrinale, lib. i. cap. 29. 


120 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


assured of receiving pardon; but where he is unknown he fears the rigour 
of strangers: besides, it is in foreign countries that he loses insensibly 
that rudeness of manner, that retired humour, that ridiculous vanity, 
which prevail among those who have not frequented various nations.’’* 
Methinks now I hear some voice repeat the poet’s invitation, and say, 
** Revele to me the sacred noursery 
Of virtue, which with you doth there remaine, 


Where it in silver bowre does hidden ly 
From view of man and wicked world’s disdaine.”’> 


Where like that happy race of which an older poet sings, ‘‘ the children 
of heaven, nourished with illustrious wisdom, with the fruit of that holy 
country where it is said celestial harmony gave birth to the chaste 
Muses, enjoy for a time that bright pure air, and those sweetly blowing 
winds, which refresh the unviolated land, where dwells that Love which 
was seated by the side of Wisdom, the handmaid of every virtue.’’+ 
Who, in fact, would not wish to behold the interior of these Catholic 
colleges, which have left such a sweet and holy memory! ‘We had 
loved it with fondness like our native home,” says one whose early 
years were spent in the English college at Douay. «Domestic harmo- 
ny and mutual confidence had indeed at all times made a college life a 
happy life; and I will affirm, that many now living in different classes 
of society, as many before us have done, look back with complacency 
to Douay, and call the happiest period of their life the years of youth 
Spent there in preparatory studies, with companions and friends who 
were dear to them?’’|| It is not thus, we may observe, that the sophists 
look back to the days of youth, and to the place of their instruction. 
But the schools of holy Church were not their mother. 

Far from the tumult of cities, the young Levites who are destined to 
bear the holy ark of the new alliance, and those also who are to serve 
God in the walks of secular occupations, are assembled to enjoy the 
sweets of solitude, and to animate each other with the love of study and 
of wisdom, having before their eyes great examples, which always con- 
stitute the most perfect school of life. Here they apply to a course of 
profound learning, which often occupies them till an advanced age. 
‘Their religious exercises commence and close each day. The solemn 
wind of night still sighs in the towers, but the bell has sounded, and 
every one rises from sleep. ‘The dawn has not yet streaked the sky, 
but the long corridors give echoes to the passing steps of the student. 
In the chapel is already collected that throng of devout youths and ven- 
erable masters, whom Christ in his own garden chooses to be his help- 
mates, some of whose devoted lives, perchance, shall be hereafter sung 
deservedly in heights empyreal. Let England no more boast of those 
roses of the divided houses which dyed her fields in the blood of her 
children. Let her remember rather that band of innocents which she 
sent forth to Liege and Lisbon, to Douay and to Rome, who returned to 
her bosom each year as the flowers of the martyrs, among which, as 
the venerable Bede would say, neither roses nor lilies were wanting ; 
for many of them were worthy to receive crowns composed of both,— 
Sepa eanoe SO Nnae OME Loh, C) <! | en ee Ree GE (C2 2 


* Christian Prince, lib. ii. 208. tT Spencer, vi. 1. + Eurip. Medea, 822. 
| Narrative of the Seizure of Douay College.—Catholic Magazine. 


AGES OF FAITH. 121 


white for angelic purity, or purple for the passion. In their cells and 
common halls simplicity is every where seen, and the humblest offices 
are imposed upon all in succession, to temper the grandeur of their 
vocation or the dignity of their state. On the evening of two days 
every week they walk abroad, either through some magnificent park, 
under the shade of a darksome wood, or to the summit of some rocks, 
or in a delicious valley watered by a stream, which winds among its 
flowery meadows. ‘hese are their pure enjoyments. Far from spend- 
ing their days in sensuality, under the shade of the altar, a frugal and 
even austere nourishment prepares their bodies for a mild and spiritu- 
alised, for a long and healthful life. Their minds are tuned to every 
gracious harmony, are imbued with every grand and solemn truth. 
Music is the language of their thoughts; while sacramental lore and 
saintly science form them to wisdom. From time immemorial in these 
Catholic schools, all over the world, it was the custom to open the 
classes with a mass to the Holy Ghost,—with the hymn, «Veni Cre- 
ator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita,’’—that is, they implored the Divine 
grace to visit their minds, in order that, whilst they partook of the sal- 
utary fruit of the tree of knowledge, they might be strengthened against 
the enemy of mankind, who might tempt them to pluck the poisonous 
fruit, which that tree also bears. They sought not glory in their devo- 
ted labours; they provided surer means for sweet tranquillity during the 
rest of life than the reward of superior ability, which the poet vainly 
boasted could secure it:— 

6 viniy dt, Aolrov dudt Bioroy 

“Eyet mchiroercay ewdiay 

’Adbaay 7 eveney he 


The triumph of a youth in the schools of holy Church did never 
sound as a note of mourning to his unsuccessful companions: unlike the 
conqueror in the ancient games, he did not by his victory occasion to 
others, 

Neoroy ty foray, week Aricorégey 
Tadocey, net em lnguopoy OL AOV> 


a detested and shameful return home, a mournful silence, and a desire 
of darkness to cover them.t He did not rob them of a mild welcome, 
nor of the sweet smile of their mother as they came to her arms; they 
returned not as through streets full of enemies, fallen from on high, and 
oppressed with calamity.t These were the cruel victories of heathens, 
barbarous and delusive,—but the crowning of the Christian conqueror 
was a common joy, and he alone felt humbled. Religion even had in 
store her own sweet balms, to administer, with kind and cunning hand, 
to the sorrows of young students, who were depressed with a sense of 
their own inability to serve and honour the masters of their education; 
for she taught them, that the inferiority of their talents took nothing 
from them in the eyes of God, and rendered them no less dear and pre- 
cious to their common mother: she taught them, that failure and disap- 
pointment might be more conducive to their future happiness than the 
most brilliant success: she always said, ‘Give me but your will, and I 


a ESE REARDAN ale Sih ahllb Al cic Dar 
* Pindar, Olymp. x. 1. f Olymp. viii. 5. + Pyth. viii. 
Vou. II.—16 L 


122 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


engage to make you wise and happy: I ask not genius, I ask not 
strength, health, success, crowns, applause,—I ask but your heart.’’* 
True, the discipline of her colleges was strict and watchful; but how 
small a part of education is the attainment of knowledge, in which vain 
sophists now say it all consists! The human character is beheld in 
the greatest deformity in a man without education, and possessed of 
immense general knowledge,—who knows much, but every thing 
knows ill. 

WON Hwloraro teyey nec dD ricraro wayra.t 

Religion did not sanction that system against nature, which takes the 
infant from its mother’s breast, and leaves the youth to lament in the 
words of the Forsaken Ion,— 
—esvov zie, ov mu” exeinv ev ayudarcus 
MnTecc Teugioal nak +E reepbaves blcv 
dmrerreendny pratarus fantecs Teogns.t 


Not the planet-like order of her temples, which is to glorify Heaven’s 
mercy, but the unhallowed mechanism of the factory, which is to enrich 
commercial tyrants, demands that sacrifice. All that she required of 
the child was, that on first coming to the use of reason, he should make 
an act of the love of God, because, if that were omitted, he would be 
guilty, as St. Thomas Aquinas held, ‘of mortal sin.’ But though she 
imposed no exercises beyond their strength, she knew that they are 
blessed who have borne the yoke from their youth; she knew that the 
source and the root of all goodness and of all honour, is the having been 
from youth well instructed. ‘The Spaniards ascribed even the cruelty 
and savage temper of Don Pedro to the negligence or ignorance of his 
governor, Don Alonzo Albuquerque, who, say they, might have tamed 
him when young.|| What a train of evils did the ancient philosopher 
discern as attendant upon false discipline, —«deradsiav,—ionorance and 
error, sadness and weeping, avarice and incontinence !§ Discipline, 
therefore, with her, assumed a decided and inflexible organization; but 
with what love was it imagined? with what benignity was it maintained? 
‘*Sinite parvulos venire ad me,”’ said our heavenly master in the school 
of God. ‘O sweet Master,’’ continues Thomas de Kempis, ‘¢in how 
few words dost thou enable all men to learn humility! ‘These holy 
words console the humble and the poor, comfort the simple and the inno- 
cent, teach us all to become like children, without malice or guile, that 
we may be beloved by God and men.’’** Jesus in the Heart of Youth, 
a Dialogue between Jesus and a Boy,—such are the titles of works 
composed by the most learned men,—a Bartolommeo dal Monte, a Dio- 
nysius, surnamed, through admiration at the depth of his philosophy, 
the extatic Doctor. ‘‘ We wish,”’ says the holy Benedict, * to institute 
a school for the service of the Lord, and we hope that we have not 
placed any thing sharp or painful in this institution; but if, after the 
council of equity, there should be found, for the correction of vice and 
the maintenance of charity, any thing a little too rude, let no one, 
through fear of that, fly from the way of safety; at the commencement 


* Le Petit Manuel du Pieux Ecolier: Paris, 1828. + Margites. 
t Eurip. Ion. 1890. || Savedra, Christian Prince, i, 16. 
§ Cebetis Tabula. ** Manuale Parvulorun, i. 


AGES OF FAITH. | 494 


it is always narrow, but by a progress in faith and in a regular life, the 
heart expands, and we learn to run with an ineffable sweetness in the 
way of the commandments of God.’’ These are the last lines of the 
Preface to his Rule, which was for the strongest aspirants to perfection. 
Less severity was shown to the weak. The master of the monastic 
schools was not to be hard, clamorous, and reproachful; but putting on 
the bowels of a mother, he was to be gentle and affectionate, so that 
whatever the scholars had at heart, they might securely and sincerely 
trust to him.* The masters and professors were expressly charged to 
converse often with the scholars, to take part in their exercises and plays, 
that no occasion might be lost of useful admonition, and of winning their 
hearts, by evincing love and benevolence.t ‘+ What obedience, and 
humility, and brotherly love,’’ cries Dr. Martin Gregory, describing the 
college of the Jesuits at Rome, ‘‘ when, but for order sake, there is no 
superior in heart and mind, when the greatest divines in the world, 
highest in place and dignity, will ask permission that they may serve 
the youngest students at the table! when the good fathers of our Eng- 
lish college wash the feet also of our scholars when they arrive first at 
Rome! When, in fine, all are fathers and brethren and sons in respect 
of each other!” Affectionate solicitude was constantly proposed as 
their duty.{ ‘The master must be full of gentleness and humanity 
for his disciples,”’ says St. Bonaventura, ‘“‘ whom he should regard as 
his children, so as to evince towards them the tenderness of a mother 
with a father’s firmness.’’|| ‘* The master,’’ says brother John, a bare- 
footed Carmelite, ‘* should always begin with some prayer like the fol- 
lowing: ‘ Humillime Rex cordium Jesu Christe, per viscera misericor- 
dize tue, in quibus visitasti nos oriens ex alto, obsecro te, creare digne- 
ris in me cor humile et purum, cupidissimum secrete eruditionis tue : 
ut in schola humilium discipulorum tuorum fiam dono tuo sapiens ad 
regendam sine deceptione novellam prolem, dulcissime genitricis tue.’ ”’ 
Like Moses, the meekest of men, like David, the most humble and 
gentle, like the holy father Benedict, who could not be angry even 
against those who wished to poison him, the master must be a pattern 
of the tenderest humanity, showing always a cheerful and mild counte- 
nance, to win the hearts of his disciples, never irritated at their faults 
or moved at their weakness, bearing with the rudeness of some, uncon- 
quered by the difficulty of others, so that no one of them may ever fear 
to approach him by day or by night. ‘This sweetness and affection will 
render the way of Christian perfection still more delightful to them. 
This will soften hearts of stone, and give them hearts of flesh. Every 
day he must remember to offer for his scholars the most holy sacrifice 
of the altar, imitating the example of him who said, *“ Lest perchance 
my sons may have sinned.’”’ But if at any time, through their faults, 
he should feel his love for them to grow cold, he should, with great 
effort and earnestness of prayer, endeavour to banish that temptation: he 
should throw his eyes upon the celestial Master, our most sweet Re- 
deemer, who never despised his poor, rude, abject apostles, obnoxious to 


* Statuta Ordinis Premonstratensis, cap. 18. f Id. cap. ix. art. 2. 
t Instructio Magistri Novitiorum, Auct. Joan. a Jesu. 
| S. Bonaventura, Speculum Novitiorum, cap. 13. 


124 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


so many passions, but loved them, bore with them, and instructed them 
with the sweetest love. On the other hand, he must not evince a par- 
tiality for some over the rest, on account of their more eminent sanctity 
or other graces; but must endear himself to all by studying the good 
of all. In reproving faults, let him never use harsh words, but as the 
Apostle says, if any one be tempted so as to commit a fault, we must 
instruct him in the spirit of gentleness ; it is not said he must reproach 
or insult, or adopt any such mode, but that he must instruct him; he 
must be ready also to excuse them, and to come forward himself in their 
behalf, urging their inconsiderate youth; and when it is absolutely 
necessary to punish the fault, he must show that he separates the person 
from what he punishes, and he must speak soothingly and affectionately 
to him, as to something most amiable, and far removed from the turpi- 
tude of vice; he must avoid also the words of magisterial authority, 
and, like one of the disciples, as if he had not himself attained to per- 
fection, he must associate himself with their labours; thus in words 
and also in deeds he must be kind and loving towards them. For his 
books, he should have the Holy Gospels and the Epistles of St Paul, 
the Ascetics and Rule of St. Basil, the Morals and Pastoral Care of St. 
Gregory, the Confessions and Meditations of St. Augustin, the Opus- 
cule of St. Bernard and of St. Bonaventura, the works of Cassien, 
Hugo de Saint Victor de Claustro Anime, Ricardus de Saint Victor, 
Humbertus de Eruditione Religiosorum, Climacus, Innocent and Ger- 
son, Thomas 4 Kempis, the treatise of blessed Vincent de Vita Spirit- 
uali, the works of Blosius and of Denis the Carthusian, the Institutions 
of Taulerus, Albertus Magnus de Virtutibus and Landulphus de Vita 
Christi. In vulgar tongues he should have the works of P. Lewis of 
Grenada, Avila, Diego Perez, Arias and St. Theresa, and others. And 
for history he should have St. Gregory of Tours, Eusebius, Theodoret, 
and the Lives of the Saints. The master should take care to employ 
his talents well. Spiritual men, to whom education is entrusted, should 
remember that they perform their duty to God when they commit to 
memory the fruit of their erudition, along with pleasant and delightful 
histories ; that in walking or sitting with the novices they may be able 
to exhilarate and entertain them, for their labours must be refreshed with 
joys. Therefore he should relate histories to them, and order others 
who have the ability to charm their companions with relations, and he 
may vary his conversation by a thousand innocent modes of diversion, 
which may excite a laugh without breach of modesty, instituting little 
contests to determine who can imagine the most perfect instance of the 
love of God or of hope, and allowing little plays to be represented on 
the sacred history, and to this he should add singing of hymns and 
psalms, to raise their souls to heaven. As for extraordinary recreations 
he must provide that all games be consistent with modesty and mutual 
love, conducive to the delight of the mind and the refreshment of the 
body. He should vary also his mode of instruction, and make use of 
Pictures and emblems, to administer delight, and keep them ever im- 
pressed with a sense of true perfection, that they may perform all their 
actions for the love of God, or on account of God. He must explain 
to them what they are to hold respecting the mysteries of faith, and he 
must explain the commands of the Decalogue. Youth being impatient 


AGES OF FAITH, 125 


of rest, he must avail himself of that love of acclamation which Plato 
remarks in them, and give them occasion to make formal acts to inflame 
their hearts with the love of holiness and the horror of vice. He will 
therefore cry, ‘¢ Vivat Jesus Christus Dei altissimi filius,”’ and they will 
all answer, ‘ Vivat.”’—** Vivat serenissima Regina celorum,”’ and they 
will answer, ‘** Vivat.’?’—** Convertantur universi homines ad fidem et 
charitatem Dei ac Domini nostri Jesu Christi,’ and they will answer, 
‘¢ Convertantur;’’ and then they may pronounce an anathema against 
forgetfulness of God, ingratitude, despair, disobedience, luxury, and 
pride; and this exercise of acclamation and of malediction will conduce 
to fervour and piety.* 

This ideal of discipline passed also to the mind of persons in the 
world. Christine de Pisan speaks of the poor human fragility in the 
days of youth, on which every well ordered sense should have compas- 
sion, as on a thing subject to passions, to diverse desires, and natural as- 
saults; and he says that masters ought to correct and form it to good 
manners by good examples: rather, ‘‘que par verbéracions ou bateures 
maistriseuses.”’t St. Gregory of Tours says, that all the ecclesiastical 
colleges in his time were expressly formed to secure that innocence of 
life which is the distinctive characteristic of the clerical office. A scho- 
lastic class was governed so far like the Church itself, that the ultimate 
object therein was to save souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. 
Well then may we exclaim with the poet, who lived at the moment of 
the transition, when the education of faith was giving place to that of 
a new philosophy,— 

‘¢ Let none then blame them, if in discipline 
Of vertue and of civill uses lore 
They did not form them to the common line 
Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore ; 
But to the antique use which was of yore 
When good was only for itself desyred, 
When simple truth did rayne and was of all admyred ; 
For that which all men then did vertue call 


Is now call’d vice, and that which vice was hight, 
Is now hight vertue, and so used of all.’’|| 


The young were taught to live in a house with little noise. There 
were to be no commands, troubles, incessant wants, insolence, impa- 
tience, or meddling with other people’s affairs further than to assist them. 
The ordinary food of scholars was plain, and generally of one kind.§ 
The dress, as may be still traced in some of the old Catholic foundations 
in England, was modest, and at the same time manly, requiring a hardy 
exposure of the limbs. Plainness and simplicity marked every object 
around them. Who does not love to find himself in one of those antique 
halls, lighted through small high grated windows, pierced in the walls 
of vast solidity, furnished with hard benches, notched and worn and 
stained with the ink of centuries, where every thing seems in the same 
state as in the time of St. Edmund or William of Paris? With what 
delight does one escape from Turkish Ottomans and the luxurious sickly 


* Instructio Magistri Novitiorum, Colon. 1613, cap. 2. 

¢ Livre des Fais, &c. chap. 11. t P. Judde, GZuvres Spirit. tom. iii. 354, 

| Spencer, v. 1. § In France and England the scholar’s fare was mutton. 
L2 


126 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


atmosphere of gaudy dissipation, to collect one’s thoughts, and to recover 
the recollections of sweet and holy study, within the plain unvarnished 
walls of a monastic college! How do they bring before one’s eyes the 
men of better days! We seem to behold united the bright school: there 
sit the race who slow their eyes around 


** Majestically move, and in their port 
Bear eminent authority ; they speak 
Seldom, but all their words are tuneful sweet.” 


There seems to rise Richard of St. Victor, Richard more than man, 
as he is styled by Dante, there to stand, 


“ One, whose spirit, on high musings bent 
Rebuk’d the lingering tardiness of death: 


He whom Dante beheld in Paradise, as the eternal light of Sigebert, 


“Who ’scap’d not envy, when of truth he argued, 
Reading in the straw-litter’d street.’’* 

Here would our saintly countryman, Edmund of Abingdon, read les- 
sons upon theology, where many and illustrious men used to be assem- 
bled to hear him, and it is related that during these readings, they used 
often to close their books, not being able to refrain from tears.t Here 
one is reminded that the labour of education was undertaken solely for 
the honour of God, and in virtue of holy obedience, without the least 
inducement, or indeed thought, of remuneration, and here one feels how 
great was the dignity which the Catholic religion imparted to every stage 
of the scholastic learning. 

But let us return to the studious disciples, the pious sons of the holy 
Nicholas and Gregory, who are all animated with the innocent ardour 
to excel in wisdom, and whose conversation is angelic as their looks; 
whom the ancient poet would have commemorated as walking in the 
law of their fathers, and reviving their ancestral goodness, collecting 
riches for their minds, shunning injustice and arrogant youth, and culti- 
vating wisdom in the quiet retreats of the muses, cogiay J” ty uuycior Tscgiday.t 
What a goodly sight is it, cries Dr. Gregory Martin in his description 
of the college of the Jesuits at Rome, to see in the streets long trains of 
students, two and two; within the college a whole swarm coming out 
of divine schools into one court together, while new companies succeed 
them in new lessons and other readers! Beautiful are the portraits of 
the Christian student which we discover in the writings of the middle 
ages. Such as represent the young Meinrad, in the ninth century, re- 
ceiving his education in the celebrated abbey of Reichenau, on the island 
in the Lake of Constance,§ and Bruno, who afterwards became one of 
the apostles of Prussia, of whom a friend, who had known him from 
boyhood, says, ‘‘ Every morning when going to school, before he left 
his lodging, he used to be at his prayers while we were playing.’’|| 
Lothaire, the son of King Charles the Bald, was committed to the care 
of Heiricus, Abbot of St. Germain at Auxerre. The abbot speaks of, 
his disciple as follows, in a letter to his father: ‘*In years a boy, in mind 


* Parad. x, t Vita ejus apud Martene Thesaur. Anecdot. tom. iii. 
} Pind. Pyth. vi. § Tschudi Einsiedlische Chronik. 2. 
|| Ditmar Annalista Saxo. 


AGES OF FAITH. 127 


a philosopher, I confess to you that in natural disposition and in genius 
he is estimable beyond others of his age.”” The language of parents and 
of guardians was not then directed to undo the work of education, and 
to counteract that of the instructors of youth. Eginhard wrote to his 
son, who was then at the schools of Fulda, and his letter was to this 
effect: ‘* My son, study to imitate good manners, and take care that you 
never offend him whom I wish you always to follow; but be mindful of 
your profession, be diligent to obey the commands of him to whom you 
have wholly committed yourself. Learned in these things, and familiar 
to their labours, you will want the advantage of no vital science. As I 
advised you while present to exercise yourself in the study of oratory, 
so I again exhort you to leave nothing untouched of that noble science 
which you may acquire from the genius of the great and most abundant 
orator; but above all, remember to imitate those good manners in which 
he excels ; for grammar and rhetoric, and all other studies of liberal arts, 
are vain, and greatly injurious to the servants of God, unless by the Di- 
vine grace they know how to be subject to virtue; for science puffeth 
up, but charity edifies. Melius mihi quidem est ut te mortuum videre 
contingat, quam inflatum et scatentem vitiis.’’ ‘The preceptor whom 
this pious parent, the secretary and historian of Charlemagne, desired 
his son to imitate, was the celebrated Raban Maur.* Let us take an- 
other example. ‘* Anselm archbishop, to Anselm, his nephew in the 
flesh, and in love his dearest son, salutation and the benediction of God. 
Since I love you especially amongst all my relations, I desire that you 
may advance well before God and before all men. Therefore I admon- 
ish and exhort you, as my dearest son, that you study diligently to fur- 
ther that for which I have sent you into England, and that you suffer no 
time to pass in idleness. Apply assiduously to grammar, and exercise 
yourself more in prose than in verses. But above all things, guard your 
manners and actions before men, and your heart before God, that when 
I shall see you, by the favour of God, I may rejoice in your progress, 
and that you may rejoice in my joy. Farewell, I commend to God 
your body and soul.’’+ Boleslaus, Duke of Poland, when a boy, was 
sent to Paris to study, and the chronicle of Cluny testifies that he led a 
most innocent and diligent life, devoting himself with all his heart and 
affection to love and serve his Creator. It is related also of St. Philip 
Benitius, a noble Florentine, that when a youth studying at Paris, he 
united his scholastic application with such piety, that he inflamed many 
with a desire of the celestial country. ‘The memory of such students 
made the recollections of a Catholic college like a book of holy instruc- 
tion, to teach men how to live and die well. Those of St. Acheul, as 
the little book so entitled demonstrates, were associated with many sweet 
and affecting examples, both in life and death, of the holiness of youth. 
St. Joseph Calasanctius, of a noble house of Arragon, gave indications 
in his tender years of the especial charity which he was to exercise to- 
wards poor boys; for while himself a little scholar, he used to assemble 
them, and give them lessons in the mysteries of the faith and in sacred 
prayers. It was he who afterwards, on coming to Rome, being divinely 
admonished that he was destined to train the minds of the young poor to 
eS ek ates) os Rew a? esha a 

* Mabillon Prefat. in III. Secul. Benedict. §. 8. +S. Anselmi, lib. iv. Epist. 31. 


128 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


knowledge and piety, founded the order of poor regular clerks of the Mo- 
ther of God for that purpose, which was approved of by Pope Clement 
VIII. and Paul V.: though he afterwards applied himself to the assist- 
ance of every class, yet his principal instructions were always afford- 
ed to poor boys, whose schools he used to superintend, and he would 
accompany them to their homes, for he beheld in each of them the child 
Jesus. It is on the day of his office that the church repeats the 
words of St. John Chrysostom, ** What is greater than to train the man- 
ners of the young? certainly I esteem as more excellent than any painter 
or sculptor, or any other artist whatever, the man who knows how to 
mould the youthful mind.” In her office on the 12th of June, she 
relates of St. John of Sahagun in Spain, that when a scholar boy he used 
to lead a most holy life, and that he used often to place himself upon 
some raised spot, and make a discourse to other boys, exhorting them to 
virtue and to the worship of God, and that he used to compose all 
differences among them. In the year 1590, God inspired a young 
scholar at the university of Douay, with the resolution to found a Car- 
thusian monastery in his own country ; this was John Vassour, Seigneur 
de Rabadingue. The resolution grew with his years and studies, and 
in the end he fulfilled it at Laboutillerie.* St. Edmund, who was born 
of poor parents at Abingdon, was sent to Paris to study; such was the 
ardour and the facility for learning in those ages. His mother gave him 
a hair shirt, which he was to wear twice or thrice a week. When he 
used to go out into the fields with other boys, he would withdraw him- 
self, and walk alone to meditate, and every night on going to bed, he 
used to write the name of Jesus with his finger on his forehead. And 
the writer of his life says, that he used to be advised by him to do the 
same. ‘The origin of this practice was thus related: ‘* One day, having 
as usual left his companions in order to walk alone through the mead- 
ows to meditate, he met a beautiful boy, who looked like an angel from 
heaven. ‘This stranger saluted him familiarly, and when Edmund ex- 
pressed surprise, he said, «I wonder that I should be unknown to you, 
since I always sit by your side in school, and am constantly in your 
company, and follow you wherever you go.’ Edmund perceived him to 
be our Lord, and he was then told by him to write his name, Jesus Naz- 
arenus, every night, upon his forehead, diligently and deliberately, for 
that this would be a defence to him against sudden death ;t and St. Ed- 
mund accordingly charged his friend to adopt that exercise.”? While at 
college he had a Psalter with a gloss, a book of the twelve Prophets, also 
glossed, and the decretal Epistles; all which books he sold, and full 
of compassion gave the price to poor scholars. One scholar, having 
an infirmity in the hand, Edmund gave a large sum of money to a 
physician to cure him. 

The ardour for studies among the saintly disciples, is often mentioned 
in the annals of monastic schools. The father of Abundus, we read, 
did not wish that his son should continue as a student. He was a pious 


* Hist. des Saints de Lille et Douai, 660. 

{ A writer in the Quarterly Review, No. LXVIIL., translates the words of the vision, 
“A practice that would secure any person from sudden death,” as if there was no dis- 
tinction between the soul being guarded in the event of sudden death, and the body be- 
ing secured from death. 


AGES OF FAITH. 129 


youth, and had a face like an angel; his mother privately gave him the 
habit which scholars wear in the churches, and sent him to another 
school; and the innocent boy was thus enabled by his mother’s affection 
and firmness to pursue the life which he loved in the church and in the 
schools.* Guibert de Nogent furnishes another instance, but more re- 
markable, as he laboured under all the disadvantages of a private educa- 
tion, which from his statement appear to have been grievous. ‘M 
mother,”’ he says, ‘‘reared me with the most tender care; hardly had I 
learned the first elements of letters, when she entrusted me to a master 
of grammar. This master had learned grammar late in life, and there- 
fore had made less proficiency in the art; but what he wanted in know- 
ledge he made up in virtue. From the moment in which I was placed 
under his direction, he formed me to such purity, he kept me at such a 
distance from all the vices which often accompany early life, that I was 
preserved from the usual dangers. However, notwithstanding all my 
application, I made but little progress under him; though he used to give 
me a shower of blows, he yet evinced such friendship for me, he occu- 
pied himself so much about me, he watched with such assiduity for my 
safety, that so far from experiencing the fear which is usual in that age, 
I used to forget all his severity, and I obeyed him with a certain feeling 
of love. On one occasion, my mother discovered that I had been ill. 
treated, complained bitterly of my master, and said, «I no longer wish 
you to become a clerk, if in order to learn letters you must suffer such 
treatment ;’ but as for me, when I heard her words, looking at her 
with all the anger that I was capable of showing, I said, ‘though it 
would be necessary for me to die, I would not cease on that account to 
learn letters, and to wish to become a clerk.’”’ Victor Hugo paints the 
ideal of a student of this kind, amidst the more dangerous companions 
of the university, ‘the scholar Frollo,”’ he says, ‘* was early taught 
Latin, and he grew in stature over the Lexicon. Silent, peaceable, and 
modest, he was never implicated in any of the mutinies of scholars, nor 
was he ever engaged in quarrels, nor for the cry, ‘ dare alapas et capillos 
laniare ;’ but to make amends, he was assiduous at the greater and lesser 
schools of the rue Saint-Jean de Beauvais. ‘The first scholar whom the 
abbot of St. Pierre-de-Val, the moment he began his lecture on canon 
law, used to perceive, always glued, opposite his chair, to a pillar of 
the school of Saint-Vendregesile, armed with his ink-horn, chewing his 
pen, scribbling on his worn knees, and in winter blowing on his fingers, 
was Claude Frollo. The first auditor whom Messire Miles d’Islien, 
doctor in decretals, saw arrive every Monday morning, quite out of 
breath, at the gate of the school of the Chef-Saint-Denis, was Claude 
Frollo. Hence at sixteen, the young clerk could have made head in 
mystical theology with a doctor of the church, in canon “law with a 
father of the councils, in scholastic theology with a doctor of Sorbonne.” 
The young Archduke Leopold of Austria maintained a thesis of phi- 
losophy and theology against some fathers of the society of Jesus, in 
presence of the Emperor Ferdinand II., his father, and the whole coun- 
cil. Where there was not this virtue and zeal for learning in youth, we 


en ere ree i 


* Hist. Monasterii Villariensis, lib. ii. cap. 10. apud Martene Thesaur. Anecdot. 
tom. iil. 


Vo. H.—17 


130 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


sometimes find in the writers of the middle ages the reflections of after 
life, expressed in language of the most affecting piety. Such an in- 
stance occurs in the Testament of Lydgate, the monk of Bury, in 
which he speaks of his youth at the age of fifteen years as follows: 


** Voyde of reason, gyven to wylfulnesse, 
Frowarde to virtue, of Christ gave lytell hede, 
Lothe to lerne, loved no vertuous besynesse, 
Save play or myrth, straung to spell or rede, 
Folowying all appetytes longyng to chyldhede, 
Lightly tournyng; wylde and selde sadde, 
Wepyng for nought, and a none after gladde. 


For lytell worth to stryve with my felawe, 

As my passyons dyd my bridell lede 

Of the yarde stode I sometyme in awe 

To be scoured, that was all my drede, 

Loth towarde scole, lost my tyme in dede, 
Lyke a yong colt, that ranne without bridell, 
Made my frendes gyve good to speade in ydell. 


I had in custome to come to scole late, 

Not for to lerne, but for a countenaunce 
With my felowes redy to debate, 

To jangle and jape, was set all my plesaunce, 
Whereof rebuked, this was my chevynaunce 
To forge a lesyng, and there upon to muse, 
When I trespassed, myself to excuse. 


To my better dyd no reverence, 

Of my soveraynes gave no force at all, 
Were obstynate by inobedyence, 

Ranne into gardeyns, appels there I stoll, 
To gather fruites spared hedge nor wall, 
To plucke grapes on other mennes vynes, 
Was more redy than for to say mattynes. 


Lothe to ryse, lother to bedde at eve, 

With unwasshe handes redy to dynere, 

My pater noster, my crede, or my beleve 

Cast to the cocke; lo this was my manere, 
Waved with eche wynde, as dothe a rede spere, 
Snobbed of my frendes such tatches to mende, 
Made deffe eare, lyst not to them attende. 


My port, my pase, my fote alway unstable, 

My loke, myne eyen, unsure and vacabounde, 
In all my workes sodenly chaungeable, 

To all good thengs contrary I was founde; 
Nowe oversad, nowe mournying, nowe jocounde. 
Wylfull, reckeles, madde; startyng as an hare 
To folowe my lust, for nothing wolde I spare. 


Entrying this tyme into relygion, 

Unto the ploughe I put forthe my hande, 
A yere complete made my professyon, 
Consydering lytell change of thylke bande 
Of perfectyon, full good example I founde, 
The techyng good, in me was all the lacke, 
With Lottes wyfe, I loked oft a backe. 


AGES OF FAITH. © 131 


Taught of my maisters, by virtuous dysciplyne, 
My loke restrayne, and kepe close my syght, 
Of blessed Benet to folowe the doctryne, 

And bere me lowly to every mener wyht, 

By th’ advertence of myne inwarde syght, 
Cast to God warde of holy affectyon, 

To folowe th’ emprises of my professyon.” 


This disposition, even in the most negligent, to recognize the virtue 
of the masters of their youth, is characteristic of these ages of faith, 
when religion secured for all persons in authority that filial reverence to 
which length of days is promised. Even Quintilian admonishes the dis- 
ciples that they should love their preceptors no less than the studies 
themselves, and believe them to be the fathers, not indeed of their bodies 
but of their minds, and he adds, that this piety conduces much to study.* 
Dante says, that so long as life endures his tongue shall speak how he 
did prize the lessons of Brunetto, and when he meets that benign pater- 
nal image of his ancient master he says, ‘I dared not tread on equal 
ground with him, but held my head bent down, as one who walks in 
reverent guise.”’ Octavian de Saint-Gelais, who wrote the Séjour d’hon- 
neur, in the reign of Charles VIII., describes in an affecting manner, 
how he met the shade of his old master, Magister Martin, when travers- 
ing the forest of adventures, whom he styles, Mon feu patron et tres 
honoré maistre. 

“ Interpréteur de la saincte pagine 
Aigle @honneur, philosophe tres-digne, 
Ha que moult fut mon mal pesant et grief, 
De voir mon maistre et personne honorée, 
Hors du siécle.— 
A Paris fut jadis mon directeur, 
A Sainte Barbe, en son noble collége 
Régent fut-il de mes fréres et moy, 
Puys son scavoir le logea chez le roy, 
Ou il vivant en honneur transitoire, 
Fut convaincu par mortelle victoire.”’+ 


In the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, the manner of teaching was ac- 
cording to the practice that still prevails in the public schools of Rome 
and Padua, and of other places. ‘The master delivered his explanation 
like an harangue ; the scholars retained what they could, and often took 
down short notes to help their memory. ‘'The act of instruction, viva 
voce,”’ says Vincent of Beauvais, «has I know not what hidden energy, 
and sounds more forcibly in the ears of a disciple transfused from the 
mouth of a master.’’t Quintilian had made the same remark, proving 
the superior advantage of oral instruction over every other; and he says, 
that youths should never be permitted to testify their approbation in a 
noisy manner, but that they should hang on the judgment of the teacher, 
and should believe that to be well said which is approved of by him; as 
for that indecorous, and theatrical, and most vicious custom, of giving 
applause to each other, it should be never permitted, being contrary to 
scholastic institution, and the most pernicious enemy of studies; but 
they should attend to the masters modestly and intensely, and the mas- 
ter ought not to attend to the judgment of the disciples, but the disciples 
On NT | EE 

* Instit. Orat. lib. i. 10. { Gouget, tom. x.  t Speculum Doctrinale, lib. i. c. 37. 


132 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


to that of the master. Who would not now suppose that this was writ- 
ten by some scholastic monk of the middle ages? and yet they are the 
words of Quintilian ;* so much farther removed are we than our Catho- 
lic forefathers from the wisdom of the ancient civilization. A correct 
idea of the mode of instruction in monastic schools may be formed from 
examining the four ancient tombs of doctors, which are in the cloisters 
of the convent of St. Dominic at Bologna, where each doctor is repre- 
sented sitting in the midst with a book open before him, which he ex- 
plains, as is indicated by his hand stretched out, while around or in front 
is seated a crowd of students in a religious habit, who are placed before 
desks, on which they are writing down as if from his lecture, or turning 
round to consult each other. These groups have, indeed, an air of anti. 
quity, which denotes that they refer to days gone by ; but yet the ven- 
erable aspect of our college halls during an academic discourse, can often 
revive within one a sense of the ancient dignity of learning, and inspire 
that noble confidence which the Roman orator desired to feel before his 
judges; for as everywhere else truth has little support and but little 
strength, so in these places one feels that false envious prejudice is weak, 
that while it may prevail in popular assemblies, here it must be pros- 
trate; its force is in the opinions of the unlearned, but it is far from the 
understanding of the prudent: its sudden and vehement impulses giving 
place, after a while, to senile lamentations,t can never enter within the 
walls which hear of universal tradition, Catholic authority, and immuta- 
ble eternal truth. It is with a feeling of devotion that one enters the 
school-rooms in the monasteries of Rome and Bologna, in which there 
is always an image or portrait of our blessed Lady. The world and all 
its miserable interests, all its fears and commotions, its rumours, and its 
policies, seem excluded; here youth was placed beyond the hearing of 
the horrors of political debate; while cities are in a ferment, and cham- 
bers of assembly resound to the sanguine declamation of inflammatory 
orators, the meek and cheerful scholar consorts with his Virgil or his 
Thomas 4 Kempis, and enjoys bright and saintly visions. If the ru- 
mour of discord should penetrate to their quiet halls, the young will 
still never put on the visage of the times, and be, like them, to gentle 
spirits troublesome. Better they would esteem it to be at once compro- 
mised, like the children of Mycale, who fell under the murderous sword 
of Thracians, though that was an event which of all others in the Pelo- 
ponnesian war, Thucydides thought the most worthy of being lamented 
and compassionated.{ When the English college at Douay was invaded 
by the agents of the revolution, by spies and guards, it might have been 
presupposed that no one could then venture to retain his cheerfulness, 
oud: dn’ icy, But there was only occasion given to show, as a venerable 
priest observes, ‘¢ what college boys can do in the way of generous self- 
devotion and dauntless enterprise; for every one then was intent upon 
devising and practising some ingenious plan to rescue various articles of 
value from the grasp of the plunderers. To carry off a lamp or a sacred 
vestment some would ascend the funnels of chimneys, and others would 
descend the external walls by ropes to enter windows of forbidden 
rooms. Strange as it may appear,’’ continues the narrator, ‘never do 
a tat thir g  e e e 


* Instit. Orat. lib. ii. 2. + Pro A. Cluentio. + Lib, vii. 29. 


AGES OF FAITH. 133 


I remember a more cheerful flow of spirits than what was manifested 
during the whole time. We sang God save the King and Dulce Domum. 
Such a behaviour astonished every one, friends and enemies wondered 
alike how we could sing in such circumstances, and sometimes heaved 
a sigh of concern to tell us we did not know what we had still to expect. 
Our classical and devotional exercises went on as usual, and continued 
till the 9th of August, when the message came on Saturday night, which 
ordered us to leave the college fora prison. ‘The clock had struck eight, 
and we were waiting for the summons to night prayers. We were soon 
ready, for we had little to carry away. Some went to take their last 
farewell of the church, by a short prayer before the altars, which, alas! 
were soon to be no more.” ‘Thus closed the oldest seminary of English 
Catholics, the mother and nurse of so many martyrs, the bulwark of 
faith, as Baronius calls it, created by God to protect the Catholies of this 
land against the blasts of heresy. It was overthrown by French atheists 
in the frenzy of revolutionary zeal; but it was reserved for the states- 
men in our age of that people which of all the world boasts to be the most 
generous, in the cool deliberation of their cabinet, under the cloak of a 
zeal for God’s unpolluted worship, by a judicial sentence, pronounced 
in all the solemn forms of equity, to legalize and consummate its ruin. 
It will now be necessary to retrace our steps in order to allude to the 
rise of the universities, which was preparing a new era in scholastic his- 
tory, and there were circumstances attendant on this transition which 
must be noticed. Nothing is more certain than that the purest and no- 
blest motives, and the most enlarged charity, gave birth to these great 
institutions. At all times it was considered a meritorious application of 
alms to support poor scholars in the academies of learning, and to con- 
tribute to their education. Origen from the age of eighteen exercised 
himself in the work of instruction, and refused every present that his 
friends offered him, although he was obliged to sell his books of gram- 
mar for four obols, which a man promised to pay him per day for his 
nourishment. In the tenth century, we read that Wolfgang, afterwards 
Bishop of Ratisbon, would receive no honours or emoluments from his 
intimate friend, Otho of Treves, but at length he yielded so far, that 
scholastic boys and youths should be committed to his care without any 
remuneration; this was before he had retired to the monastery of Ein- 
siedelin, whence he was raised to the see of Ratisbon. The same char- 
itable zeal for the education of youth distinguished the Belgian prelates, 
of one of whom it is said, such was his solicitude in educating boys, 
and in instituting scholastic discipline, that even when he went ona 
journey, whether long or short, he led his young scholars with him, for 
whom he had also a preceptor and a quantity of books, with the other 
utensils of scholars.* In the will of Charles de Balzac, Bishop of 
Noyou, it was ordained that Montlhery, and three other places, should 
each furnish a boy to be presented by the curate to the Celestines of 
Marcoucis, from whom he was to receive, during three years, the sum 
of one hundred livres, to enable him to study at college, while the same 
sum was to be paid, as a marriage portion, to a maiden of each place.t 


* Mabillon, Prefat. in V. Secul. Benedict. 3. 
+ Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, x. 184. 
M 


134 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


In many places, as at Rome, education was wholly gratuitous. The 
Archduke Leopold of Austria, besides repairing deserted or ruined 
churches, and enriching many episcopal sees, founded, for the augmen- 
tation of the Catholic faith, numerous classes for young scholars; he 
established colleges and seminaries, building them in a style of ‘magnifi- 
cence, and giving the government of them to learned monks. Francois 
de la Béraudiere, Bishop of Périgueux, founded a seminary in that city, 
and placed a versified inscription upon it, stating, that in quitting the 
world he left to posterity his book, his church rebuilt, second to no 
other, and a seminary founded at his expense for the nourishment of 
poor scholars. << ae, gracious heaven grant,”’ it added, ‘ that posteri- 
ty may receive great utility, and may God vouchsafe pardon for my past 
sins.””* Sometimes these poor scholars were supported by casual chari- 
ties. In the year 1246, there was established at Rheims the scholastic 
society of the Good Children, which imposed a rigorous rule of religion, 
having obtained it from Archbishop Ivelle. These poor scholars were 
directed occasionally to go out two by two to beg alms for the commu- 
nity.t Sometimes they were indebted for their education to the charity 
of individuals. Monteil speaks of a note by Pierre Pisgier, a monk of 
the Augustinian monastery of Tours, respecting an alms of fifty sols 
tournoys, which the king had given him to support him during his stu- 
dies in the university of Angiers.t Pope St. Urban V. supported more 
than a thousand scholars at different academies, and supplied them with 
books. 

Unquestionably, the zeal for learning was fervent at the time when 
the universities arose: yet it would be a great mistake to imagine that 
they owed their origin to a mere human ambition for promoting science 
and literature. It was simply faith and charity which originally led to 
their foundation ; for the will and power of kings would not have suffi- 
ced to establish them if religion had not inflamed many of their subjects 
with a desire to impart to the poor the inestimable advantages of sacred 
learning. ‘The colleges of the university of Paris were founded by de- 
vout persons for poor scholars. ‘That of Navarre was founded by Jean- 
ne de Navarre, wife of Philippe-le-Bel, in the year 1304. This was 
for seventy poor scholars, twenty children students in grammar, thirty 
students in logic and philosophy, and twenty in theology. The gram- 
marians were to receive four sols per week, the philosophers six, and the 
theologians eight. The college of Thirty-three, on the mountain of 
St. Genevieve, was founded by a poor priest for poor students of the- 
ology, to the number indicated in the name, corresponding with the 
years of our Saviour’s life. The college of Boncourt was founded in 
1357, for eight poor students, who were to have each four sols per 
week ; and the celebrated Scotch college, founded in 1323, by David, 
Bishop of Murrai, in Scotland, was also for poor Scotch students. 
Mary Stuart made them legacies at her death.|| The college of Cor- 
nouaille, in Paris, was founded in 1317, by a clerk of Brittany, for poor 
scholars of the diocese of Cornouaille. ‘The college of the Lombards 
was founded in 1333, for Italian scholars who should not have more 


* Gouget, xvi. 13, + Anquetil, Hist. de Reims, liv. iii, 
} Hist. des Frangais, iv. 412. | De St. Victor, Tableau de Paris, tom. iii. 603. 


AGES OF FAITYy. 135 


than twenty livres of rent: it was called the House of Poor Italian 
Scholars of the charity of the Blessed Mary. The college of Mon- 
taign was founded in 1314 for eighty-four poor scholars, in honour of 
the twelve apostles and the seventy-two disciples. ‘The Sorbonne 
itself, according to the plan of Robert de Sorbonne, was for the poor : 
it was a community of poor masters, ‘ pauperes magistri,””» who were 
to give lessons gratis. ‘The college of Boissi was for scholars who re- 
sembled its humble founder, Etienne Vidé, who declared that they must 
be poor and of low origin, ‘‘ qui non sint nobiles, sed de humili plebe, 
et pauperes, sicut nos et preedecessores nostri fuimus.”” The college of 
Harcour was founded in 1280, by Raoul de Harcour, a canon of Paris, 
of an illustrious house of Normandy, for poor scholars of that province. 
The same spirit gave rise to all the similar foundations in England, 
Spain, Germany, and Italy. At Pavia there are gratuitous colleges of 
a magnificent order, founded and still supported by noble families, the 
Caccian and Borromeon, the last of which supports thirty-two students. 
Some colleges were appropriated to particular nations or orders. Such 
were at Bologna the magnificent college for Spaniards and that of the 
Belgians, founded by a silversmith of Brussels for youths of that city, 
who were to be chosen there by the company of silversmiths. But 
generally, poverty alone had privileges in these places of learning; and 
if the rich did repair to them, they were admitted only on condition of 
conforming to the discipline of the poor. In the university of Pisa the 
scholars were obliged to be dressed in a kind of uniform of a given 
colour. he cloth was of inferior quality and of a low price, and even 
the greatest and wealthiest signor, who was inscribed on the roll of 
scholars, was forbidden to put on a more noble cloth.* In some colle- 
ges at Paris the students could only expend one sous per day for their 
nourishment. The offices each day were terminated with prayer for the 
souls of the charitable founders.t Not even a state of utter destitution 
excluded youth from the advantages of a university education. The 
class of Spanish students who live upon the alms dispensed at the gates 
of convents, who have no other property than their class-book and their 
gown, and some of them no other lodging but the peristyle of some 
church, may be seen at the present day regularly attending the classes, 
receiving degrees, and not unfrequently carrying off academical and 
ecclesiastical honours by their sheer merit, without having any other 
recommendation. At the end of the annual course they quit the town, 
and wander about all the summer in bands of four or six, provided with 
guitars, singing student songs, and begging alms. Many students, who 
belong to rich and noble families, consider it a refinement of gentility 
to join these bands, whose manners have created a certain simple and 
romantic character, that is now almost peculiar to the Spanish student. 
In consequence of the advantages afforded to learning in the univer- 
sities, it became a desirable object for the monks, who inhabited the 
provinces, to have houses there for the reception of a certain number of 
their students, who might still dwell in cloisters, so as not to acquire 
the spirit of the world;{ and accordingly other colleges were built for 
ee eee NE eee Eger ere ae 


* Statuta Studii Pisani et Flor. ann. 1479. t Monteil, tom. iv. 
+ Mabillon de Stud. Monast, xii. 


136 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


that purpose. So early as in the eighth century, the monasteries of 
Clairvaux and Villemoustiers, and others, had houses for students in 
Paris,* but in the thirteenth century the custom became general. The 
college of Cluny, in Paris, was for students of that order, who should 
be sent to Paris to pursue their studies. It was founded in the year 
1269. In the time of our Henry IV. the monks of Crowland speak of 
their scholars studying at Cambridge.t John Wisbech, abbot of Crow- 
land, in Edward IV.’s time, built chambers in the college of the monks 
of Buckingham at Cambridge, for the use of the scholars of Crowland 
who might be sent there to prosecute their studies.t The Benedictines 
of Canterbury, Durham, and Gloucester, had separate colleges under 
those names for their youth at Oxford. Each convent in Paris had 
scholars from convents of its order in the distant provinces, and even 
from those in England and Germany. There was a college there for 
the students of the abbey of St. Denis.|| And this was the case at all 
the other universities of Europe. The provincial Council of Cologne 
in the year 1536, recommended that some of the junior. monks of each 
monastery should be sent to Catholic universities. Nevertheless, there 
were evils attending this arrangement which made devout men in those 
ages lament the preference given to the system of universities over that 
of the ancient monastic schools, and some will be of opinion, that the 
experience of centuries has only confirmed the justice of their appre- 
hensions.§_ We shall see in another place that the abbots were alarmed 
at sending their students to inhabit cities, and that the young men were 
themselves unwilling to go. The congregation of the Scholars’ Valley 
arose in the year 1201. Four professors of the university of Paris, 
preferring solitude to the world, and the life of contemplation to the 
glory of the schools, retired into a desert valley of Champagne, in the 
diocese of Langres, where the bishop allowed them to build cells. 
Some young scholars of the university followed them to this solitude, 
and this re-union of young disciples constituted the congregation or 
order of the Vale of Scholars.** The most exact discipline was indeed 
maintained in the monastic colleges in the universities. The rules for 
the students of Cluny, when pursuing their studies at Paris, were very 
strict: they were never to go into the city excepting with leave of the 
superior, and attended by masters. The utmost sanctity was to reign 
in the college.tt But still, amidst such a multitude of scholars from all 
nations, it was impossible to obviate every evil. St. Augustin removed 
from Carthage to Rome in consequence of the boisterous manners of the 
students in the former school. ‘The chief cause of my going to 
Rome,” he says, ‘‘ was my hearing that young men studied there more 
quietly, and that they were kept in order by a better discipline: that 
they might not break insolently into the school of a master whom they 
did not follow. At Carthage, the license of the scholars is odious and 
intemperate: they burst in furiously, and commit so many injuries with 


* Hist. Monasterii Villariensis, i. cap. 8, apud Marten. Thesaur. Anecdot. tom. iii. 
t Hist. Croylandensis, Rer. Anglic. Scriptor. tom. i. t Id. 560. 
| Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, iii. 

§ Joan. Devoti Instit. Canonie. lib. ii. tit. 11, 

** De St. Victor, Tableau de Paris, ii. 1214. 

TT Henrici I. Abb. Clun. 29, Statuta Bibliothec. Cluniac. 


AGES OF FAITH. 137 


wonderful stupidity ; for which laws should punish them unless custom 
were a patron. ‘They think they do all this with impunity, when in 
fact they are punished by that very blindness, and suffer incomparably 
worse things than they inflict upon others. So I resolve to remove 
where such manners were not to prevail.’’* Jacobus a Vitriacus, in his 
Historia Occidentale, gives a dark, but no doubt exaggerated picture, of 
the disputes and jealousies among the scholars of different nations in 
the university of Paris. ‘The French were styled proud and effeminate, 
the Teutonic nations furious, the English were taxed with being drink- 
ers: though it is to be remarked, that Fuller speaks of drinking and 
swearing among the lower classes as having begun to grow frequent in 
his own time, subsequent to the pseudo-reformation,t when Milton, 
fallen on evil days, had to beseech his Muse to drive far off the barba- 
rous dissonance of Bacchus and his revellers; to which epoch also 
must be traced the testimony of Poggio, where, in a letter to Nicholas 
Niccoli, he says, that the English were more occupied with eating and 
drinking than with letters. ‘The Normans were styled vain-glorious, 
the Burgundians senseless and gross, the Britons light and inconstant, to 
whom the death of Arthur used frequently to be objected, the Lombards 
were said to be avaricious, the Romans seditious, the Sicilians cruel and 
tyrannic, the Flemings prodigal and gluttonous. One can detect, how- 
ever, in this the fertile invention of a satirist, magnifying the peculiarity 
of national character; neither is it fair to confound the scholars who were 
receiving their education at the university, with those external pension- 
ers who used to be called Martinets, because not belonging to any col- 
lege, they flew like swallows from one to another, and staid only at that 
which suited them the best. After all, though the innocence of monas- 
tic students might fear the dissipation of a university, it is probable that 
the influence of the general manners which they beheld there would be 
felt in later ages as the inspirations of a better world. ‘The zeal for 
learning, which imparted somewhat of a wandering and Homeric char- 
acter to the life of scholars as well as professors, was not unaccompanied 
with a tender piety. Andrieu du Hecquet speaks of his studies at Paris, 
at Cologne, and at Louvaine, in these terms,— 


“ Lettres j’apprins (car homme indocte est vain) 
En toi Paris, en Coulogne et Louvain, 
Ou le tout soit a la gloire de Christ, 
Le cueur, le corps, toute l’ame et |’esprit.”’| 


These studies were associated with many sweet recollections of a 
friendship that was almost angelical, where names were not even mutu- 
ally known, but only countenances, and what was common between all, 
the love of learning and the reverence for holy Church; for these 
friends saw each other only in the schools and before the divine altars. 
In some places, indeed, a less secluded discipline was established in 
union with certain forms of a poetic life, as in ihe universities of Spain, 
where the students are allowed to go into society, or to perform a sere- 
nade, to as late an hour as nine in the evening on Sundays and the fifth 
feria, but at other times a student is not allowed to appear in public with 


 Seecaai ES CERO UEERO TU RCEE RENO. 3 | LEI GRMC PO Bes Sol eee aes 
* Contess. lib. v. + Fuller’s Thoughts, 53. { vii. 
| Gouget, Biblioth. Frangaise, tom. xii. 


Vou. II.—18 m2 


138 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


his guitar, although it is an instrument almost inseparable from him. 
‘he scholars in the colleges of Paris used to visit Gentilly and two 
other villages in their customary walks, which used to be called Ire ad 
Campos.* ‘The leave to play or for the promenade, were themes which 
the old poets of France did not disdain to choose. One of our ancient 
writer says, ‘* Before this time there was an old custome for the scho- 
lars of London to meet at the priory of St. Bartholomew, to dispute in 
logic and grammar, upon a bank under a tree.” A joyful festival was 
that of St. Catharine to the students of Padua; it was denominated the 
Feast of Hope. Sometimes the mirth of public rejoicings was allowed 
to penetrate within universities. A contemporary writer relates that, 
during those which took place after the battle of Bouvines, in the reign 
of Philip Augustus, the scholars of the university of Paris, not content 
with the joy of one day, protracted their triumph during seven days, 
dancing and singing continually. Aristotle was silent all that time; 
Plato proposed no questions; all books were laid aside; but the xpos, 
which Pindar condescends to notice as the contumacious diversion of 
boys, throwing all things into confusion, was not required for their 
enjoyment; neither did their discipline permit the rougher exercises of 
boxing and the pancration to form athletic champions, which were both 
prohibited by the Spartan discipline; and yet Aristotle says, that even 
that tended to make youth too brutal, Sede. "Tiberius, to render his 
son Drusus odious for the character of cruelty, permitted him to be 
present at the combat of gladiators.t In reading Mabillon’s account of 
the foundation of the Benedictine public schools in Germany, we might 
imagine that it was a passage from the writings of Plato, to explain the 
ideal end of a perfect education; for he says that these schools were 
instituted, in which an uncultivated and savage race by degrees might 
be taught to lay aside their hard rough manners, and being exercised in 
a mild and holy discipline, might be rendered gentle and humane.|| The 
innocent and simple recreations of a country life belonged to students 
even while attending the monastic schools, where they would have felt 
less fear than Ulysses at the prospect of spending a night upon a lake 
or river, lest they should suffer from the cold air which springs up be- 
fore the dawn.§ For swimming there was even provision made where 
rivers were not near. With the ancients, baths for swimming were 
provided with porticoes, gardens, libraries, and places where philoso- 
phers might discourse and poets recite their verses. Agrippa was the 
first to establish one of these baths at Rome. Here were places for all 
exercises of the body and amusement of the mind. The famous Ulpian 
Library was in the baths of Diocletian. In the middle ages the predo- 
minance of the swimmer’s sport may be learned from those paintings 
in the palace of ‘Tau at Mantua, which represent the diversions of the 
different seasons. Places for swimming were provided by Charlemagne 
in the neighbourhood of his schools, and we discover frequently in the 
monastic chronicles allusion to the healthful and manly recreations 
which were permitted to their scholars. But whatever license in this 
respect might prevail in universities, learning continued to be grave, and 


* Lebeuf, x. 13. _ F Polit. viii. 3. + Tacit. Ann. 1. 
| Prefat. in iii. Secul. Benedict. § 4. § Od. v. 469. 


AGES OF FAITH. 139 


solid, and religious, and had not then yielded place to the modern philo- 
sophic system of education, in which students are chiefly employed in 
constant little manipulations, and are taught, like the boy in Goetz Von 
Berlichengen, not to know their own father from their learning, or rather, 
as Bonald says, because they pin butterflies, glue plants, or arrange little 
morsels of mineral substances: natural philosophy was not an essential 
part of studies, but the primary and indispensable object was to train the 
young to love what ought to be loved, and to hate what ought to be 
hated, and according to Plato, that is the true end of all education.* 
The studies of seculars in the courts of nobility were such as were 
useful as well as interesting to youth; for the scholastic doctors do not 
seem to have been in ignorance of what was the proper learning for 
noblemen. The book of instruction entitled L’Esperon de Discipline, 
by Antoine du Saix, which was composed for Charles, Duke of Savoy, 
contains a view of all virtues and vices, and an abridgment of all branches 
of knowledge, and of every thing that belongs to the education of youth, 
both relating to the mind and body. The Abbé Gouget admits that the 
author shows a profound knowledge of human nature, and that his idea 
of education was admirable.t For the clergy and for the priests of 
letters, the universities provided, no doubt, higher studies. ‘The chairs 
of theology, founded in the Sorbonne, were seven in number, consisting 
of that of reader, that of contemplative theology, that of positive the- 
ology, that of the interpretation of the holy Scriptures, that of casuistry, 
that of controversial divinity, and the seventh was consecrated to the 
interpretation of the Hebrew text of Scripture. Who can doubt but 
that in these schools Raphael would have found subjects more adapted 
to his genius than that which was furnished to him by the school of 
Athens, which he revived in his immortal painting on the walls of the 
Vatican, when one observes the success which crowned his sublime en- 
terprise to represent the dispute on the mystery of the blessed sacra- 
ment? And remark too what a contrast would be found if one were to 
assist with the eyes of an artist or of a poet at the polemical discussions 
which have succeeded in some places to the scholastic disputations of 
the ages of faith! But give the reins to imagination, and try to con- 
ceive a scene of the highest intellectual and even poetic interest: your 
mind’s creation will fall short of the reality which Catholic schools have 
witnessed! In the year 1304, a crowd of clerks, monks, and laymen, 
were assembled in the great hall of the university of Paris to hear a 
thesis which was to be sustained de quolibet. There were fourteen 
scholastic champions, and it was a young stranger of lofty and thought- 
ful countenance who was to sustain their attack. This stranger was 
Dante, who, being then in exile, had travelled into France for his in- 


struction. 
**'Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers,” 


was the verse first inscribed at Ravenna upon his tomb. 

But it is time to break off, though one would stand charmed and for 
ever unwearied in the holy and peaceful retreats of Catholic learning. 
Let us still speak of them as we move away. Pliny, in setting forth 
the praise of Isacus the rhetorician, contrasts the school with the forum, 


* De Legibus, liv. ii. t Tom. xi. 376. 


140 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and says he has passed his sixtieth year, and still he is only a scholas- 
tic,—than which kind of men there is nothing simpler, or purer, or bet- 
ter. ‘The forum inspires the best men with some degree of malice: the 
school being concerned with fictitious causes, is a peaceful and innocent 
thing, neither is it less happy, especially to old men; for what can be 
happier in old age than that which is most sweet in youth?* « Nam 
quid in senectute felicius quam quod dulcissimum est in juventa 2” 
The Catholic schools provided that safety for the philosophic nature 
which was sought for with such anxiety by Plato, though he seems to 
have considered its attainment as impracticable. ‘* Where can we find 
safety for it?’? he asks, ‘¢and where are there means existing to enable 
it to arrive at its end? We have seen that to such a nature belong, of 
necessity, the talent of learning with ease, and memory, and courage, 
and magnanimity: therefore, from early youth, such a person will be 
first among all wero tora ev araow, especially if he should have, in addi- 
tion, a body corresponding to these dispositions of soul; therefore I think 
that his relations and fellow-citizens will desire to have him in their inter- 
ests when he grows up; they will consequently fawn upon him and give 
him many salutations, flattering his future power. Living, then, sur- 
rounded by them, what will such a man do? particularly if he be a native 
of a great city, and rich, and noble of race, and besides, handsome and 
tall? Willhe not be filled with a hope which nothing can subdue, think- 
ing himself competent to conduct the affairs of both Greeks and Barba- 
rians? Will he not adopt a high pompous manner, full of specious and 
dramatic action, being swollen with vain and senseless pride ?’’t 

Now in these Catholic schools, which we may well leave with regret, 
that philosophic nature was sanctified and preserved; there were no 
flatterers, and no temptations opposed to the manners of an innocent 
angelic life: there was not the knowledge of evil. The cares of the 
worldly race were so excluded, that it became scholars’ fashion to take 
no trouble about the things of life, as if all necessaries would wait upon 
us at the instant we want them. Pride was kept down, for there were 
no inquiries there instituted as to nobility of birth or prospects of future 
power. ‘There was not found the proud disdain or supercilious neglect 
of those, who with themselves at war, forget the shows of love to other 
men. Courtesy to strangers was expressly required as a criterion of 
proficiency. ‘The meek were there the favourites, and the wisest and 
the greatest were the most humble. In a word, every thing estimable 
and precious was comprised within the school. There were devout 
exercises, the resources of piety, the delights of music, the solemn 
choir, the poetry of the groves and streams, the communications of 
study, the exhilaration of play, the sanctifying influence of example, the 
sweets of friendship, of which the poet is obliged to return here for the 
purest example,— 


— “O! and is all forgot ? . 
All school-days’ friendship, childhood, innocence 2” 


A brief review of the character of friendship during the ages of faith, 
will form the conclusion of this third Book. 


* Epist. lib. ii. 3. + Plat. de Repub. lib. vi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 141 


CHAPTER VII. 


Frienpsuip, that sweet engaging word, which awakens so many pure 
affections, so many grateful recollections, that word so familiar to the 
tongue of youth, which was shouted in play, and looked in study, and 
whispered every morning at the altar of God; friendship, that musical, 
poetic, religious word, to exhilarate the j oyful, to encourage the diligent, 
to console the wretched, is associated most intimately with the manners 
of the ages of faith, with the days of scholastic education, and with every 
conception that we can form of the present and eternal beatitude of the 
meek. It is not possible, says an ancient sage, either that a wicked 
man should be a friend to a wicked man, or that a good man should not 
be a friend to a good man:* profound and piercing words, that may 
lead many to meditate on the vanity of their own hopes, and not a few 
perchance to see evidence that their own piety, notwithstanding the zeal 
which seems to animate them for God’s honour, is hypocritical and false. 
Cardan inserts it among his maxims of civil prudence that there can be 
no such thing as friendship, excepting between the wise, who may be 
called philosophers.t Understanding, he says, that our religion is the 
only true philosophy, for that not even conformity of studies, of literary 
or scientific principles can yield it, is shown by Aristotle, who observes, 
that the common bonds which give rise to friendship, do not consist in 
thinking alike with respect to the heavenly bodies, for there is no ground 
of love in unanimity on such matters; but that it must be of a more 
general description, and therefore goodness is requisite, for it is not 
possible, he adds, that evil men should think alike excepting within 
very confined limits.{ Friendship is clearly a treasure unattainable to 
the proud, who can endure nothing that is contrary to their own caprice 
and customs ; unattainable to scorners, who despise the things which are 
excellent, because the good will fly from such men; unattainable to the 
vain and dissipated, who can only receive words for words, tokens of an 
acquaintance, which is itself an unhappiness; unattainable to all men 
whose manners are not formed to meekness, unless, indeed, we dignify 
with the name of friendship such a passion as that of the barbarous 
Huns, who are described as so capricious and choleric, that they would 
separate from their companions without any cause of anger, and return 
to them without any reason for reconciliation in one and the same day ; 
for the refinement of more civilized society cannot of itself present any 
higher claims to it, since that only tends to destroy the simplicity and 
truth which the ancients, as John of Salisbury remarks,|| deemed so 
essential to friendship, that they used always to represent the Graces 
naked. That only tends to make men hold their friends, as Plautus 
says, enclosed within their teeth, having not confidence enough even to 
pronounce their name;§ that only tends to make them suspect each 
other, though they speak together as if friends; through its influence 


* Plato, Phedrus. t Prudent. Civ. cap. vi. t Ethic. lib. ix. 6. 
|| De Nugis Curial. iii. 7. § Plautus Trinummus iv. 2 


142 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


they are taught to receive the words of those who perhaps truly love 
them, as those of an enemy, and are thus deceived by their own dread 
of deception. What is this, cries St. Odo in his collations, but the 
wretchedness of human life?* The truth is, and to express it in the 
words of St. Augustin, men can never love one another with true love 
unless they love God. But he who loves God will love his neighbour 
as himself.t Hence the friendship of the meek is immutable. «I have 
read in your letters,”’ says Petrus Cellensis, writing to Bernerdo, ‘that 
you have lost old friends without having found new. But true friend- 
ship in virgin purity and constancy of fervour can never be adulterated 
or cooled. It never dies, but with a daily renovation, like the sun, is 
always in vigour. Therefore if you ever had friends you have them 
still, not old, which denoted what was imperfect, but renewed, which is 
the work of God.”{ The Catholic religion in many ways conduced to 
the formation as well as to the solidity of friendship; the multiplication 
of those innocent and useful relations which sweeten and adorn the life 
of men followed of necessity from that principle of association which 
we have seen emanated from the church, and gave a new form to socie- 
ty. In all common pursuits % érdcy xowavig, there is friendship, says 
Aristotle. In all companionship there is love. In sailing together, or 
labouring together, or reading together, and similarly in all other com- 
mon sufferings or performing, in proportion as there is fellowship there 
is friendship.|| Now we have already seen how the Catholic religion 
extended these common bonds, and associated men together in a thou- 
sand forms of connection, who otherwise would have been isolated and 
separate, and therefore it furnished a soil most favourable to this sweetest 
flower of friendship. Another way in which the religion of the meek 
promoted its growth, consisted in its removing the artificial barriers into 
which pride divides the world. ‘+ By the law of friendship,”’ says the 
blessed CGlred, abbot of Rievaulx, ‘the superior is on a level with the 
inferior, for it frequently happens that some of an inferior rank, or order, 
or science, are taken into friendship by others of more pre-eminence, 
who must then despise and esteem as nothing all the things which are 
not of nature; they must have constant regard to the beauty of friend- 
ship, which is not adorned by silks or gems, nor dilated by possessions, 
nor flattered by delights, nor exalted by honours and dignities; and 
thus recurring to the principle of its origin, they must acutely attend to 
the equality which nature gave, and not to the appendages which cupid- 
ity has superinduced. ‘Therefore, in friendship, which is the best gift 
both of nature and of grace, the sublime descend, the humble ascend, 
the rich want, the poor are enriched, so that each communicating his 
condition to the other, the equality spoken of is maintained.§ Friend- 
ship belonged to the meek because they were weaned from the love of 
riches, for as Ariosto sings, 


In poor abode, mid paltry walls and bare, 
Amid discomforts and calamities, 
Pia MS Sil AN SS ah de PT er fh eh hy a hes 79 a Se a 


*S. Odonis Collation. lib. i. Bibliothec. Cluniac. } Tractat. 87 in Joan. 
+ Petri Abb. Cellensis Epist. lib. ix. 2. || Ethic. lib. viii. c. 9. 
§ De Spirit. Amicitia, lib. iii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 143 


Often in friendship hearts united are, 

Better than under roof of lordly guise, 

Or in some royal court, beset with snare, 
Mid envious wealth, and ease, and luxuries; 
Where charity is spent on every side, 

Nor friendship unless counterfeit is spied.* 


Besides this, meekness of itself fitted men for friendship. Cardan says, 
that the conversation of any common unlearned person from among the 
people, is more agreeable than that of a sophistical and learned man, 
_ because there is nothing so offensive as the pride and affectation of the 
wisdom of the world; but as the Catholic religion extirpated the roots 
of pedantry and arrogance, and made men, however learned or accom- 
plished, speak and comport themselves like others, according to the 
natural sweetness of humanity, which is recognised equally in all 
classes, it made them also estimable, and entitled to be the objects of 
friendship. In fact, as the Greek poet says of generosity, the Catholic 
religion made men young again.t Catholic conversation is cheerful and 
popular, as it were youthful; that of the modern schools is gloomy, 
suspicious, pedantic, and senile. In the latter, we find a false and pre- 
tentious urbanity, refined and pompous, but ill concealing insensibility 
and egotism; in the former a simplicity which perhaps at first offends, 
but by degrees, a disposition also along with it of a subdued and smiling 
tone, which soothes, charms, and ravishes by its goodness. And sooth 
we shall the more appreciate this privilege of meekness conducing to 
friendship by considering what is the wretchedness of those who forfeit 
it; for those learned men who otherwise have the least chance of secu- 
ring a friend, are precisely those to whom friendship is most neces- 
sary. Cicero remarks this in speaking of Dionysius, for he says, 
‘‘What a misery must it have been to such a man to want friends 
and familiar conversation, one who like him was learned from a boy 
and skilled in ingenious arts.”*t Moreover, by inducing habits of med- 
itation and retirement, and a temper of mind essentially opposed to 
the spirit of Thersites, a temper devout and joyous, though softened 
and subdued like the bright tints in a landscape by a certain tone of 
sweet melancholy, that religion assisted and regulated the develop- 
ment of those qualities which men of acute philosophic observation 
like Cardan have found to be conducive to friendship ; for he says, 
that in choosing friends, those persons ought to be selected who are 
by nature constant and melancholy, and who are not easily withdrawn 
from affections, whom we find from boyhood to have been always 
content with one or two companions, with whom they assiduously con- 
versed.|| He might have added too, that men who reject mysteries are 
not made for friendship, which Hesiod shows in saying that night was 
its mother. Nor is this all, for who does not perceive how greatly 
friendship was promoted and secured when religion taught the meek, as 
the blessed Francis said, to love their brother when they are far from 
him in the same manner as when they are with him, and never to say 
any thing in his absence which they could not say with charity to his 
face?§ When it taught them to place in their daily memento those 
ee ce SS ANN R50 NE OT RMON. iy ui 


* Canto xliv. Rose’s translat. { Eurip. Heraclid. 698. + Tuscul v. 22. 
| Prudent. Civilis, cap. xli.  § S, Francisci Opuscul. De la Bigne Bib, Patrum iv. 


144 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


friends who had departed to the other world, that by prayers of faith 
their bliss might be advanced, or to draw consolation from that convic- 
tion of their fecility at which the remembrance of their manners enabled 
them to arrive? Where the principles of the Catholic religion did not 
exist, the most acute and reflecting men in surveying the disorders 
which sin and death have entailed upon humanity, have been obliged to 
speak of friendship in terms that are calculated to wound and shock the 
heart which feels that it is formed for the sweets of infinite and eternal 
love. ‘They speak of it as a dangerous thing, to which reason must 
place limits, lest it should prove a source of bitterness when the hour of 
separation arrives, and they even teach that the heart must never ven- 
ture to trust itself to perfect friendship. ‘Length of years hath taught 
me many things,’”’ says the poet, ‘for mortals should cherish only a 
moderate friendship for one another, and not an affection from the deep- 
est marrow of the soul; 


xeth xn meds Axeoy pverov uyac 


but only a love which can be easily loosened without tearing and over- 
powering the soul with affliction, for an extreme friendship is too great 
a weight; and nothing is good when it exceeds the bounds of modera- 
tion.”’** What a contrast was here to the sentiments of the meek who 
love their friends in God; who by the mystic privileges accorded from 
the Mount are enabled to inherit friendship, that sweetest plant of earth, 
if it be not rather of heaven, in all its strength and perfection, in all its 
beauteous and everlasting bloom! How strange sound to them the 
words separation and dissevering of the soul as connected with the death 
of friends! What mortal ever loved with more profound and intense 
affection than the tender Augustine, and yet he commits his sainted mo- 
ther to the grave, that mother who had wept so many years for him, who 
was doubly his mother, having brought him forth both to the world and to 
heaven, reconciling him to Jesus Christ, and he feels that in regard to 
her he has henceforth only a higher duty to fulfil. A prudent companion 
is in no respect as Homer says inferior to a brother.t Such a friend did 
he see quietly inurned, not with the sentiments of uninstructed humanity 
giving vent to sorrow in the bitter cry of desolation, but with those of 
the renovated race in the sweet ecstacy of quiet thought meditating on 
everlasting gladness. ‘‘ Nebrides is living in the bosom of Abraham. 
Yes, whatever may be intended by that bosom of Abraham, Nebrides, 
my dear friend, is there; for where else could be a soul so beautiful and 
so Christian? He is in that place of glory and repose about which he 
has so often questioned me. His ear is no longer attached to my lips, 
but his lips are attached to that source of living water which is nothing 
else but thee, O my God! ibi Nebridius meus vivit, et bibit quantum 
potest sapientiam pro aviditate sua sine fine felix.”? What an exten- 
sion of the sweets of friendship followed from the assurance that there 
is communion between the living and the dead, that there were those 
who already arrived at expiatory or even at supremely blessed shore 
pee be addressing us in such words as Dante heard from the spirit of 
asella. 


— 


* Eurip. Hippolyt. 253. + Od. viii. 585. 


AGES OF FAITH. 145 


——_—— Thee as in my mortal frame 
I lov’d, so loos’d from it I love thee still.* 


William of Malmesbury relates a wondrous example, which would 
have greatly moved the stoics, of the manifestation of this ghostly 
friendship made after the death of the body. Robert of Lotharingia, he 
Says, was the intimate friend of the most holy Wlstan, Bishop of Wor- 
cester. It happened that when Wlstan was sick at Worcester, and 
near his blessed end, Robert was at court employed about the king’s 
affairs, when lo! Wlstan appeared to him in a vision saying, «If you 
wish to behold me alive hasten to Worcester.’’? Moved by this vision, 
Robert obtained leave from the king to depart immediately, and he never 
rested night or day till he reached that city; for he feared greatly lest he 
should not arrive in time to find him alive, for the journey was very 
long. However, on arriving at the last stage, he was overcome with 
sleep, and Wlstan appeared to him again, saying, «* You have done all 
that pious love demanded, but you are disappointed in your hopes, for I 
have departed. But dear companion, provide for your own safety, 
because you will not remain long after me; and to convince you that 
you are not deceived by a fantastic vision, this shall be a sign to you. 
‘To-morrow, after you have committed my body to the earth, a gift 
will be presented to you in my name.” Robert awoke and proceeded 
on his way. On arriving at Worcester, he found the procession already 
marshalled to escort the saint’s body to the tomb; he joined it, and then 
condoled with the monks of whose funeral meats he partook in silence. 
Already mounted on his horse, he was taking leave of the holy brethren, 
when lo! the prior stepped forward from the throng, and kneeling down 
reverently presented him a gift, saying, ‘* My lord, accept I pray you 
this cap of your ancient friend made of lambskin, which he was accus- 
tomed to wear when he rode on horseback, and it will bear witness to 
your long friendship with our holy lord.’’ Hearing these words and 
recognising the gift, the other turned pale, and a cold shuddering ran 
through his bones; he dismounted and waved to his attendants in sign 
that he suspended his departure: demanding an audience of the monks, 
they assembled with looks of consternation and amaze, in the chapter- 
house, where with tears he related the circumstances of his vision, and 
then having commended himself heartily to the prayers of all their soci- 
ety, he resumed his state and departed. It was in the middle of Janu- 
ary when WIstan died, and Robert did not survive the succeeding June.t 
Of the friendship which was found to prevail during the middle ages, 
even in the scenes of secular dissipation, history and also the fables of 
chivalry, which are true representations of real manners, furnish many 
engaging and memorable examples. Witness the deliverance of Bou- 
teiller and Dufresnoy, from the hands of Louis of Spain, by Sir Walter 
Mauny and his troop of heroic companions, one of the most noble and 
affecting adventures of which friendship, honour and chivalry can boast. 
The old writer of the life of Bayart says, that the Duke of Nemours had 
so won the hearts of his companions, that they would all have died for 
him; and he bears the same testimony to the Seigneur de Molart, of 
whom he says, ‘tous ses gens se feussent faits mourir pour luy,’’ and 
NO SERIE Emi inde | RR ee nS es eda 


* Purg. ii. t Will. Malmesbur. de gestis Pontif. Anglicorum. lib. iv. 
Vol. 11.—19 N 


146 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of Bayart himself, he affirms that while lieutenant of the king in Dau- 
phiny, he so gained the affections of both nobles and peasants, that they 
would all have died for him. Indeed, the annals of the middle ages 
abound with portraits of the purest and noblest friendship, and even the 
dveugeves of the Greeks, invested too with an interest that the muse of Eu- 
ripides had never conceived, was a character familiar to them. The 
friendship of Bassanio and Anthonio, which in our age would be deemed 
unreasonable, and opposed to the decrees of domestic philosophy, was 
drawn by Shakspeare from the life as seen in the middle ages. We 
have been so imbued in other works with illustrations of this theme, that 
I shall be content at present with offering the instance of the friendship 
which is ascribed in the history of Gyron le Courtoys to Hector le Brun 
and Abdalon le Beau, of whom we read, ‘en telle maniere lung ayma 
lautre par telle guise et par telle amour comme se ils eussent este freres 
charnels. Ne oncques puis pour advanture quils trouvassent discorde 
ne peut venir entre deux, ne lung neut envie de ]’autre en nulle maniere. 
Oncques ne se departerent lung de lautre, mais tousjours chevaucherent 
ensemble en se entre aymant. Desi grant amour que lung ne povoit 
vivre sans lautre.’’* ‘The confidence which men reposed in their friends 
is nobly expressed in the same history, where Gyron replies through 
the iron bars of his prison to one who spoke of his calamity. ‘My 
friends will hear of my adventure. I] ny a en ceste part montaigne qui 
puisse tenir mes amys quils ne viennent jusques a moy par fine force.’’t — 
The literature which corresponds with these compositions, and which 
has superseded them in the courts of nobility, may pretend to greater 
refinement of language, and claim.a place in a more philosophic order 
of study, but assuredly it does not furnish examples in equal abundance 
of the same virtue to exalt and adorn the human character: but I has- 
ten to consider the friendship which belonged more especially to the 
meek during these ages, and which is sought for, not so much in fables 
of chivalry, though they are not without some sweet remembrance of it, 
as in saintly histories, and in the sentiments which have been delivered 
by the wise and holy. Doubtless if with clear view the intellect be 
fixed upon the ordinary proofs of friendship comprised within the 
world’s annals, there will be ground rather for sadness than for joy, for 
it cannot be deceived by hearing the Capulets and Montagues speak of 
friendship when it must witness also their rivalries and wrath. ‘ Who- 
ever hates one man cannot love another truly and spiritually, nor yet 
himself, nor God, since he is in mortal sin, as Denis the Carthusian 
says.’’{ All was false and worthless that wore the semblance of love 
in men that to Christ’s school were dead ; but after rejecting every sus- 
picious claim we are not left unprovided with bright examples that are 
proof against the test possessed by saints. Celebrated was the friend- 
ship of St. Paul and St. Thecla, of St. Ambrose and St. Monica, of St. 
Jerome and Paulina, Eustochia, Blesile and Ruffina, of saints Marcella, 
Albina, Asele, and Leta, of St. Francis of Assissi and St. Clare and 
Jacquelina, of St. Anthony of Padua and a devout person of Limoges. 
At an infinite distance from every thing allied to inhumanity, from all 
indications of a selfish, contracted, and unfeeling nature, was the self- 


* Gyron le Courtois, f. xxxvi. { Id. f. ccevi. ¢ De Arcta Via Sal. vi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 147 


renouncement and mortification of the saints. ‘They were precisely the 
most feeling, liberal and generous of men. We find some of them 
acknowledging that it was for the love of a friend, after God, that they 
were induced to renounce the world, following him like the companions 
of St. Bernard to his cloister.* _Gaudentius had been the playfellow of 
the young Count of Woycech, his fellow student in the cloistral school 
of Magdeberg, and when under the name of Adalbert he retired into the 
monastery of St. Alexius, on Mount Aventine, that faithful brother alone 
followed him, though still in the flower of youth. Ever constant to 
friendship, he left that peaceful retreat when the blessed man direcied 
his steps to preach the Gospel to the heathen people of Prussia, accom- 
panied him through all his dangers, and never left him till he had seen 
him receive the martyr’s crown.t Passionate fervent souls, quick to 
conceive hopes of inexpressive joy, would you hear of a friendship sud- 
denly formed, and yet precious as the ruddy drops that warm the feeling 
heart, lasting as eternity ? you will find an instance in the lives of the 
anchorites of the desert. ‘*Ah, Paul, why hast thou left me?’ cried 
the holy Anthony. ‘Why depart without wishing me adieu! Tam 
tarde notus, tam cito recedis?’’t Men of chivalrous honour, who pro- 
fess to feel such admiration at the spectacle of moral greatness, would 
you behold constancy of love in death? Friendship was on the tongue 
of the martyrs in their passion. ‘Then drawing from his finger a ring, 
he steeped it in his blood, and giving it to Pudens. ‘+ Receive it,’’ said 
he to him, *“‘as a pledge of our friendship, and let the blood which 
stains it remind you of that which I have shed this day for Jesus 
Christ.’’|| And in fact, who than sainted fathers of the holy church 
have ever recognised with greater clearness the value and excellence of 
friendship? ‘The consolation of this life consists in possessing a faith- 
ful friend who may rejoice with you in prosperity, condole with you in 
sorrow, and exhort you in persecution.”’ It is St. Ambrose who speaks 
thus. Who does not know that the express rules of holy societies pre- 
scribe companionship, and point out like the ethic page the comparative 
helplessness and inefficiency of man in an isolated state? Priests and 
religious persons of different sacred orders were not to go forth alone 
for Svy ve dv’ texouéyw men are more powerful both to think and to per- 
form,§ a maxim which experience and the Homeric wisdom had taught 
to Diomede. 


Gan’ eb Tee moot dyiip ape’ Errotro xak GAROS 
Maarov Gaarrwed nat Qrgrarsuregoy tora, ** 

The great Homer has the wisdom and piety to make Agamemnon 
declare, in reference to Achilles, that a man who is loved by God is 
equivalent to a multitude of people.tt And religion found nothing in the 
sentence which was unworthy of the discipline of truth, that recognis- 
ed a principle most dear to an heroic nature, that friends and compan- 
ions are from God. Jacob, being asked by his brother concerning those 


* Vita V. Wale Abb. Corbiens. iv. lib. i, 467 apud Mabillon Acta S. Ordin. Bene- 
dict. Secul. iv. p. i. 

t Voigt. Geschichte Preussens i. b. 4, ¢. 

+ S. Hieronym. Vita S. Pauli Eremit. | Acta Martyr. in S. Perpetua. 

§ Aristot. Ethic. lib. viii. 1. ** TI. x. 222, tt U. ix. 116. 


148 MORES CATHOLICT; OR, 


that were with him, replied «Parvuli sunt quos donavit mihi Deus 
servo tuo.’’* 

The respect which was shown to friendship, and the earnestness with 
which its demands were urged, form a characteristic of the ages of faith, 
from which these latter ages of the world have sadly declined. Cicero 
says that friendship ought to be preferred to every thing excepting vir- 
tue, but many at present seem to esteem it a mark of superior ability and 
of honourable diligence, nay even of a more manly and philosophic na- 
ture to prefer the most trifling object of domestic or professional care to 
its advances, however earnest, as if, forsooth, it were evidence of wis- 
dom and perfectness of life to be insensible. We find no trace of this 
severity, which in truth, however men may talk of philosophic disci- 
pline, savours more of the counting-house than of the cloister, in the 
manners of the middle ages. Their spirit was expressed by Bayart, 
when he said to his noble hostess at Brescia, ‘Toute ma vie ay plus 
aymé beaucoup les gens que les escus.’*+ It seems also as if men were 
loved more than books, more than the dearest and most familiar pursuits, 
for humanity was always uppermost in the affections of those who held 
that only the love of Jesus Christ is durable.t Petrarch, describing his 
reception in the Carthusian monastery of Montrieu, says in his letter to 
those holy men, ‘the activity, the ardour with which you rendered me 
all sorts of services, the agreeable conversation I had with you in gen- 
eral and in particular, made me fear I should interrupt the course of 
your devout exercises.’’ When St. Adalhard, abbot of Corby, was re- 
called from exile and restored to honour by the emperor Lewis, who 
had been persuaded by his enemies to banish him to the island of Heri 
off the coast of Aquitaine, on the day of his departure all the brethren 
of the abbey, in which he had spent an angelic life in close confinement 
for the space of seven years, were moved to tears at losing him, though 
they could not but rejoice that he was to be restored to his own. Ragnar- 
dus, who was afterwards abbot, being of a fervent spirit, was above all 
overwhelmed with affliction. So that when the holy servant of God was 
about to depart, and all the brethren were kissing his feet and his foot- 
Steps, watering them with their tears and wishing him farewell, he alone 
remained shut up in his cell, in order that he might not see the man de- 
part who was dearer to him than his own life; but when the other had 
long inquired for him, he was at length discovered in the obscurity weep- 
ing and lamenting: being called to come forth and wish the old man fare- 
well, he entreated the messenger to leave him to weep alone. The holy 
man, on hearing this, left the ship, on which he was already embarked, 
and returned, that he might not depart without a kiss from that brother 
whom he knew was holy. So he found him weeping, and they em- 
braced and then separated. The brethren then accompanied him back 
to the ship. The sails were soon raised, and as long as she remained 
vsible they stood on the shore looking after him; for the spirit of love 
constrained them and they could not resist it.|| The ereatest saints, re- 
freshed with heavenly visions, did not pretend that the being deprived 
of friends and the being left solitary on earth made no sorrowful impres- 


ste rae recreate TE THE MME DAS Ee alt. i ll 


* Gen. xxxiii. + Chap. li. t De Avilla, Epist. Spirit. x. 
| Vita Adalhardi, Mabil. Acta S. Ordinis. Bened. Secul. iv. § 1. 


AGES OF FAITH. 149 


sion upon their souls. ‘* What is the reason, my brother,’”’ writes St. 
Hilda to one of her correspondents, ‘ that you have been so long absent, 
and that you delay to come to me? Why do you not consider that I 
am alone in this land, that no other brother visits me; that not any one 
of my relations comes to me? And if you hold back because hitherto I 
have been prevented from executing what you desired, you ought, on 
the ground of charity and relationship to forget this, and without requir- 
ing any persuasion to change your mind. O my brother, my dear 
brother, how can you afflict the mind of my littleness with constant sor- 
row, with weeping and sadness day and night? Do you not know for 
a certainty, that of all living persons I prefer no one to your love? Be- 
hold, I cannot explain all things to you by letters. Now I am assured 
that you feel no concern about poor and humble me.”* Among the 
epistles of St. Boniface, there is one addressed to Baldhard, in which is 
an affecting complaint: ‘the presents which were brought to me by 
your faithful messenger Aldrad [ have embraced with fervent charity ; 
and now, by God’s assistance, I would fulfil all that you require of me, 
if it might be your pleasure to come to me; for I cannot in any manner 
stop a fountain of tears when I see and hear of others who are going to 
their friends. ‘Then I recollect how I was forsaken by my parents in 
my youth, and how I have remained here alone, and yet I was not for- 
saken by God, but I return thanks to God for his immense goodness in 
preserving me. And now, my brother, I ask and implore you to take 
away sadness from my soul, because this greatly injures me. For I say 
although it were to be but for the space of one day, and that then you 
would depart by the will of God, yet that would be sufficient to make 
this sorrow pass from my mind and this sadness from my heart; but if it 
should displease you to grant my petition, I call God to witness that it is 
not I who have forgotten our love.”+ St. Boniface writes many letters 
in the same spirit, and similar may be found in the correspondence of St. 
Anselm. Mark how deeply these men felt any omission in exchange 
of letters. Petrus Cellensis writes as follows, to remonstrate with his 
friend for not having written to him: ¢ Charity, which is patient, strange 
to say, only drives me to impatience. How is this? Have you no 
such things as charts, or is your love shortened? What is the cause of 
such along silence? Is there a failing of hearts as well as bread in 
Britain? Of the one indeed I had heard, but I never believed that the 
other would succeed it. A bishop may be excused, on account of his 
incessant labours and the solicitude for all the churches, and his care of 
the afflicted and his reconciliations of enemies, but what forbids a clerk 
to write letters to his friend? It remains to condemn your negligence. 
Quia igitur oleum non misistis, aculeum sumitis.”’{ And again to anoth- 
er friend he writes, «‘ Am I to believe you a different man? or that I am 
changed? Friendship cannot dissemble, cannot flatter. O my dearest 
friend, am I to ascribe it to oblivion or to negligence that you have ab- 
stained so long from coming to salute your friend? Is it that you are 
occupied? But it is not gracious to be always occupied.’’| On the 
other hand, the earnest affectionate excuses made by monks for not hav- 


* 8. Bonif. Mart. et Archiep. Epist. lvi. t Id. Epist. lxiv. 
+ Petri Cellensis, lib, i. Epist. xv. | Id. Liv. i. Epist. xix. 
N 2 


150 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ing written answers to the letters addressed to them by friends in distant 
monasteries, leave nothing incomplete in this contrast to the cold form- 
ality and proud indifference of later manners. It is not, however, to be 
inferred from these passages that the sincere piety and fervent spiritual- 
ity of the ages of faith would have countenanced the selfish and unrea- 
sonable exaction of those triflers who imagine that their conversation 
ought to be always of paramount interest, so that every occupation, 
however holy and important, should give place to it. St. Peter, the 
venerable abbot of Cluny, wrote to St. Bernard, testifying how he loved 
and revered him, though he had never been in his presence, and saying 
how he had long desired to converse with him, but that his many em- 
ployments and sufferings had prevented him,* and in a letter to the abbot 
Suger he laments, in most feeling terms, that while he is often obliged 
to see persons whom he has no desire to see, and to be engaged with 
secular applicants whom he would rather fly from, he can scarcely ever 
behold his beloved friend the abbot of St. Denis, Suger, who has never 
been at Cluny but once.t Holy priests in those ages, dearly as they 
prized friendship, and profoundly as they admired genius and sanctity, 
could not sometimes find leisure for the company of a Suger or a St. 
Bernard, and every door-knocking trifler in our times would call in 
question the charity of learned and laborious men, if they were not 
always prompt to listen to them. It is not the justice of such com- 
plaints that should be advocated, but there does seem occasion to look 
back with complacency to the manners of those ages which were char- 
acterized by the fervour as well as by the prudent and reasonable regu- 
lation of friendship. Friends are great thieves of time, but as Petrarch 
says, no time ought to seem less stolen, less squandered than that 
which, after God, is expended upon friends.t It is not every vile cir- 
cumstance or interest of money that should take precedence of them. 
Tyndarus enabled his poor fellow captive, whom he had known a boy 
when himself a boy, and whom he had ever loved from that time, to 
escape, and when his furious master demanded of him where was his 
fidelity, he quietly and wittily replied, «« What, do you require that I, 
who have been your slave since one day and night, should be more 
attentive to your interests than to his with whom I have passed my life 
from boyhood?”’|| But most men are now the captives of masters who 
would answer instantly that they do require them to show that prefer- 
ence, and who would find no great difficulty in making themselves 
obeyed, and men, whose employments are all about money or the 
objects of political ambition, receive their inexperienced friend with 
such looks as if they presumed that he must have read the inscription 
of the elder Aldus over their door. But how engaging, how holy are 
the expressions of affection which we meet with in the writings of the 
ages of faith! Witness the following letter, addressed to Lullus the 
bishop: ‘I entreat you, O beloved brother, forget not, but always cher- 
ish in memory that ancient friendship which we entertained for each 
other when living in the city of Maldubia, where the abbot Eaba nour- 
ished us in amiable charity, when he used to call you by the name of 


*S. Petri Ven. Epist. lib. i. 28. t Epist.lib. iv. 15. 
t Petrarch. Epist. ad Vir. illust. | Plautus Capteivei, iii. 4. 


AGES OF FAITH. 151 


Irtel, by which now the abbot Hereca salutes you in holy salutation, as 
well as the whole congregation which dwells in your monastery. He 
that shall persevere in peace unto the end, the same shall be saved. 
Farewell then my beloved, and for ever fare thee well. My beloved, 
chosen of God, because charity has no price. ‘This is the sign of the 
abbot Hereca.”* That disposition to make little presents, which is 
found so prevalent in Spain and Italy, has come down from the primi- 
tive ages of Christianity, when the pagans used to say, See how they 
love one another. In the latter country I seldom departed from a mon- 
astery or from a casual visit to a holy man, without some book or 
devout print, which was forced into my hands. You cannot open any 
volume of correspondence which dates from the ages of faith, without 
finding some allusion to the interchange of modest gifts, as tokens, 
not of vanity but of love. /®lred, abbot of Riveaux in Yorkshire in 
the twelfth century, has left a beautiful book on spiritual friendship, to 
show the vanity of all friendship which is not spiritual, and sanctified 
by a devout reference to the eternal love of Christ. ‘*Some men,’’ he 
says, ‘are irrationally moved and inclined in mind towards a person by 
discovering his vices. For many can draw the minds of others to 
themselves, on account of a vain philosophy or some foolish boldness 
in military affairs ; and what is worse still, many because they are prod- 
igal, luxurious, betrayers of modesty, favourers and followers of base 
men or vainly fond of silly spectacles, entice others to be inclined 
towards them.”t To these allude the words of St. Augustine, «Si 
male amaveris tunc odisti, si bene oderis tunc amasti.’”? Here occurs a 
reflection on the vanity of a friendship which is not according to God, 
in which the maxims of a heartless and selfish philosophy under the 
name of liberality, tend constantly to engage men. Even a heathen 
had the piety to say, You are my friend, but I cannot think with you, 
or wink at your error. 


Luerapeovely yap cuxs guvvoreiv eu. 


St. Bernard said in his letter to Master Guido de Castello, the disciple 
of Peter Abailard, «‘I should do you an injury if I were to suppose that 
you so loved any man as to love his errors with himself. Whoever 
thus loves any one does not know yet how he ought to love. Such 
love is earthly, animal, diabolic, equally hurtful to the person loving and 
to him who is loved.”} This wisdom passed even to the friendships of 
chivalry in the middle ages. Of Bayart the old writer of his life says, 
*‘oneques ne fut veu qu’il ait voulu soustenir le plus grant amy qu’il 
eust au monde contre la raison.’’|| But to return to the treatise of our 
fElred. ‘* You say,’’ he continues, ‘* what greater peace than to love 
and to be loved? If indeed in God and for God, I do not deny this; 
nay, I approve of it: but if according to the flesh or the world, see what 
envyings, what suspicions, what flames of an ardent spirit exclude rest 
of mind. And if none of these should occur, death, which all must 
endure, destroys this unity, bearing grief to the survivor and punish- 
ment to him who passes.’’§ ‘+ While I was still a boy in the school, 


* 8. Bonif. Epist. lxxxviii. + Id. iii. 12, t Epist. cxcii. | P. 597. 
§ Id. Speculum Charitatis, lib, i. cap. 25. 


152 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and delighted with the society of my companions, my whole mind gave 
itself to affection and devoted itself to love. So that I thought there 
was nothing sweeter or more useful than to be loved and to love. So 
fluctuating between diverse loves and friendships, my mind was borne 
hither and thither, and not knowing the law of true friendship, was 
often deceived by its similitude. At length there came into my hands 
the book of Tully de Amicitia, and I congratulated myself on having 
found a certain formula of friendship. I was delighted with the gravity 
of the sentences, and with the sweetness of the style; but afterwards, 
when it pleased my good Lord to correct the devious, raise the fallen, 
and cleanse the leper, renouncing worldly hope, I entered the monas- 
tery, and devoted myself to the study ef the holy scriptures, and in a 
short time I found this so sweet, that all worldly science became, in my 
eyes, comparatively vile. Then when that book, De Amicitia, came 
back to my mind, I wondered why it did not any longer give me the 
same pleasure as before, for now nothing could excite the whole of my 
affections which was not seasoned with the salt of the holy scriptures. 
Wishing then to strengthen these remarks on friendship by the authority 
of scripture, and to spiritualize them, I undertook to compose this little 
work on spiritual friendship ;’? and where he represents his pupil allud- 
ing to the book of Cicero, he repeats this testimony in reply: «I am not 
unacquainted with that book, which used at one time to delight me, but 
from the days that I became sensible of the sweetness of the holy scrip- 
tures, and that the mellifluous name of Christ claimed all my affection, 
nothing that I ever read or hear seems sweet or lucid to me, however 
subtilly arranged, which has not the salt of the heavenly letters, and the 
seasoning of that sweetest name.’’* 

We must not, however, suppose from the gravity of these sentences, 
that the joys of friendship were included among those things which 
became to him weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable. Hear how he 
speaks of the society of Rievaulx. «Three days ago, as I went round 
the cloisters of the monastery, when I had seated myself in the midst of 
a beloved crowd of brethren, I fell to admiring the leaves of each tree, 
the fruits and flowers, which bloomed as if ina paradise of pleasure. 
Finding no one in all that crowd whom I did not love, and by whom I 
did not believe that 1 was loved, I experienced such joy that it surpassed 
all the delights of this world. For J felt as if my spirit were transfused 
into all, and the affections of all infused into me, so that I might say 
with the prophet, ‘ Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres 
in unum.’ ’’ ‘Then, after alluding to two persons, who were more espe- 
cially joined to him in intimate affection, his friends from early youth, 
who had continued with him through all the stages of his religious life, 
he proceeds as follows: ‘* What then? was it not a certain portion of 
beatitude thus to love and to be loved? Thus to assist and to be assist- 
ed? And thus, from the sweetness of fraternal affection, to fly aloft to 
the more sublime splendour of divine love on the ladder of charity, at 
one time ascending to the embraces of Christ himself, and at another 
descending to rest sofily on the earth, in the love of one’s neighbour ?”’t 


MattieanEmEaremenrm 2 EL anin ener sens ana, 
* Ailred. Abb. Rievallensis de Spirit. Amicitia Prolog. 
T De Spirit. Amicit. lib. iii. in Bibliothec. Patrum, tom. xxiii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 153 


Thus did he enjoy friendship with all the sweetness of humanity and 
all the unction of a spiritualized and illuminated heart. «* Ecce ego et 
tu,’ he writes to his young friend, ‘et spero quod tertius inter nos 
Christus sit.”’ 

But this third course has already exceeded all just proportion, and I 
must hastily bring it to an end. Enough has been produced to show 
how richly the pleasures of friendship were included in the inheritance 
of the meek, who in sooth could hardly have been said to possess the 
earth, if the grant had not comprised them. ‘Homer did well,’’ says 
Plutarch, ‘‘ in making Telemachus reckon among his calamities that he 
had no brother.’’** And just was the remark of Pindar, that all kinds of 
advantage are derived from friendly men. 
veces St ravrol- 
att pbawy dvdeay.t 


And though the Christian philosophy would contradict the poet’s sen- 
tence, that honour departeth from him who is deprived of friends,{ (for 
few mortal men, he himself admits, are faithful in times of misfortune, 
so as to be partakers of suffering; and how can the infidelity of hypo- 
erites be charged upon their victim,) yet it would sanction the opinion 
that friendship supplies, to spirits perfect and already chosen, a bliss 
which might constrain meekness itself to cry, ‘ Behold, the earth is 
mine.”’ 

Such, then, are the observations suggested by a view of history rela- 
tive to the meek in ages of faith, and to their enjoyment of that posses- 
sion which was promised to them from the Mount. With hearts only 
bent upon the attainment of heaven, the earth was in abundance given 
to them, while the proud and foolishly deliberate race, of which were 
those who cried, ** What shall we do? If we let him go, all men will 
believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our place and 
nation,”’ feared to lose temporal things and thought not of eternal life, 
and thus, as St. Augustin remarks, lost both.|| Mild in all the manners 
that secured the order and the harmony of social intercourse, imbued 
with the principle of obedience, meekly submissive to the Church, to 
the rulers of the state, to the laws which they either received or admin- 
istered, meek amidst power and riches and nobility, meek in the hum- 
bler ranks of the common family, they inherited the earth and derived 
from it all that could sweeten or dignify the existence of men. Degree 
was maintained in their Christian warfare. Therefore, conformable to 
the wise distinction of St. Augustin, the rich were not humbled to piety, 
so as to exalt the poor to pride; for in no manner would it have been 
right that in that life, where senators were laborious, there workmen 
should have been idle, that rusties should have been delicate where 
came, abandoning their delights, those who were of the Lord’s vine- 
yard.§ Stability was infused into the political as well as into the eccle- 
siastical order, for the rule of truth and the knowledge of the end of 
good and evil, put an end for ever to the uncertainties and vicissitudes 
of speculation, respecting both the one and the other: it was not sup- 
posed that a society, which no heresy or impure superstition had ever 


* De Amicit. frat. + Nem. Od. viii. t Nem. x. 
} Tract. 49. in Joan. § S. August. Num. 33. 
Vor. IT.—20 


154 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


disorganized, required from age to age a succession of changes and refor- 
mations, the occasions and the plan of which were to be determined by 
the caprice of sophists, to whose judgment each generation was to sub- 
mit, in concluding when and how it was to revolutionize the whole 
frame of its constitution; as if there was nothing fixed or eternal in the 
principles or end of a Christian government, and as if manners alone 
were exempt from the necessity of constant vigilance, as if they alone 
could never perish or require change. As in time of sterility or excess 
of rain, and the other evils of nature, so men were patient under the 
luxury or avarice of rulers; for they knew, as the wise historian of 
Rome observes, that there will be vices as long as there will be men, 
that neither are these continual, but that they are compensated by the 
intervention of better things.* Delivered from the anxieties and enmi- 
ties which would attend continual alterations in the form of that govern- 
ment, whose object, as Seneca explains, was to secure to every man 
leisure, not labour, recreation and not toilsome pain, the earth to them 
yielded its choicest treasures, both of material and intellectual good. 
Innumerable objects of almost infinite variety ministered to their plea- 
sures and necessities ; cities rose in the desert, and the beauty of divine 
temples formed a paradise of pleasure in every spot to which the provi- 
dence of God might conduct their steps. Nature, sanctified by religion, 
and restored to harmony by faith, for them was delivered from its ancient 
malediction. The intellectual world was granted to them as a boundless 
and inalienable domain. ‘T'o them poetry offered its sweetest incense, 
and learning gave up all its accumulated stores. Spirituality threw a 
resplendent light on every object around them, and developed for their 
advantage the riches of a mysterious and unfathomable creation. Mind 
_ and body were associated to produce the concord of an universal order, 
and friendship gave them a foretaste of that everlasting communion, for 
which they were destined in the regions of supernal joy. Blessed in 
the hope of heaven, blessed in the possession of the earth, these gener- 
ations of the poor in spirit and of the meek, fulfilled their appointed 
course, and passed on from time and things finite to that destination 
which exceeds all human thought, and all utterance but what is merely 
negative, to announce with trembling awe and adoring love, what they 
cannot be,—eternity and God. 


a eT Be 
* Tacitus, Hist. iv. '74. 


AGES OF FAITH. 155 


THE FOURTH BOOK. 


CHAPTER I. 


No more discourse of earth and all its fair possessions, promised from 
the mountain, which heard the heavenly voice disclosing the way of 
happiness tomen. I now must change the notes to tragic; for such are 
those which tell of mourners, though they were in mourning blessed. 
Solemn task! yet argument, not less concerned with beatitude than that 
which described the lives of those who secured, by meekness and pov- 
erty of spirit, both earth and heaven’s eternal kingdom. Deep, myste- 
rious theme! more than speech can tell, attractive, announced as it was 
in tone so soft and mild, as one might have thought never before met 
the ear on mortal strand, sounding as if from the voice of some angelic 
marshal, fanning us with swanlike wings, while the gates of lucid man- 
sions opened to the music of this unearthly strain, which affirms that 
those who mourn are blessed, for that comfort shall be their’s. 

All generations of men have mourned; but how vain would be the 
search into ancient history, in hopes of discovering that they were there- 
fore blessed! Here is however.a new voice, and sweet, indeed, in mor- 
tal ears, which consoleth those who mourn with the assurance that they 
shall be comforted; and since this is the voice of Him, whose know- 
ledge is the law of nature and of grace, we may be sure that henceforth 
the study of history will bring new results, and present a very different 
phenomena from any thing that philosophers had ever before observed. 
It seemed no less strarige to affirm, that the poor in spirit and the meek 
were blessed; and yet, what striking illustrations and evidence of that 
fact have we discovered in the history of the ages of faith? Let us feel 
emboldened, then, by his experience, and resume our study, giving it 
this new direction, investigating the annals of these ages of the world 
in especial reference to the tenor of man’s woe, whether proceeding 
from the incidents to which he is obnoxious by nature, or from the 
influence of supernatural causes, which are the consequence of the light 
and life of faith. 

But ere we proceed it may be well to remove the objection which 
some might advance against our intended course in general, from sup- 
posing that it obtruded upon them melancholy themes. Such persons 
must be reminded, that it is not religion’s voice, transmitted in the 
writings of the middle ages, which first makes men acquainted with 
mourning, and that they will not be the less constrained to remember 
woe by attempting to banish the principles and associations of faith. 
To say nothing as yet in proof that it is faith which alone affords a 
remedy for the wounds of life, but leaving them to think as gloomily as 
they will of the influence which it sheds upon history, they must, not- 
withstanding, admit at once that by nature, as men, independent of all 
tradition and revelation, they are, sooner or later, compelled, either by 


156 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


the experience of present sorrows, or by the fear and anticipation of 
future evils, to fall into the ranks of those who mourn—or, rather, as 
Cicero says, of the miserable. Do what they will, depart as far as 
they please from the philosophy of the middle ages, there is no avoid- 
ing this. As reasonably might they hope to be dispensed from death, 
as to pass through life, short as it is, exempt from the experience and 
the thoughts of woe. If they look at the world which surrounds them, 
and mark the countenances that front them on every side, they will find 
the greatest and most heroic men, visibly written mourners in their 
looks, like Spencer’s gentle knight, who was armed, indeed, with glori- 
ous panoply— 
“But of his cheere did seme too solemne sad.’’* 


Melancholy is ascribed as an heroic quality to Hercules, Lysander, 
Ajax, Alemzon, Bellerophon, Socrates, and Plato. ‘There is no escap- 
ing it by taking refuge in boldness and absolute war against goodness. 
Cain was melancholy, as St. Augustin says;t and who is not? It ig 
propagated from Adam. 

Mourning, then, by itself, formed no distinguishing characteristic of 
the ages of faith— 


** From time’s first records the diviner’s voice 
Gives the sad heart a sense of misery.” 


f®schylus delivers this testimony; and what a solemn melancholy 
breathes in the chorus of the Edipus Coloneus, which sings the mourn- 
ing of the human course! Never to have been born is best of all; but 
after having appeared, to descend again, as soon as possible, to the 
lower regions, while young, is next in degree of good. 

‘The happiness of man lasts not long,” says Pindar.|| Would you 
hear the father of heroic poetry himself announcing his own conviction 
in the solemn words of his ideal hero. «O, Amphinomus! truly you 
seem to me to be wise, being the son of so ereat a father, whose fame 
is so widely spread ; and they say that you are his son, and you resemble 
him; therefore, to you, I say, but do you hearken and consider it in 
your mind, that the earth produces nothing, not one animal breathing 
and moving upon it, more wretched than man.”§ You have here the 
affecting testimony of the human race to the misery of its condition, 
before it had beheld the light of Christ. 

In whatever direction we turn through the world, we shall hear 
mourning’s voice, whether it sound of sharp anguish, or breathe in 
sighs. Orosius, the historian, whom Alfred translated, and made so 
well known to our ancestors, diffused a tone of great melancholy over 
his history, which he had intended first to entitle, “‘ De Miseria Homi- 
num’’—a title which, Bonarsius says, might be given to all history.** 
Hesiod says, that a thousand woes wander amidst men, that the earth is 
full of evils, the sea full of them.tt Profound was the sense entertained 
by the ancients of the vanity of all human prosperity and joy; amidst 
their delights, they always felt as if, to use their own expression, there 
was something cruel that would strangle them— 

SE LET) VON: ET etal a! alee, hse eT 


* Faery Quene. t Epist. 105. + Aischyl. Agam. || Pyth. Od. iii. 
§ Od. xviii, 125. ** In Preefat. ad gesta Dei per Francos. +t Op. et Dies. 


AGES OF FAITH. 157 


Toke pay 
"Beya modagnns dpaéort 
Onxe naraiza’ Graph xoprctts. 

Remark what an instance is here furnished by Pindar in celebrating the 
glories of Xenophon of Corinth—‘‘ That one single day which passes 
so quickly! placed around his head these three illustrious deeds, or the 
crown, which was the reward of his victory in the Stadium, the Dia- 
lium, and the armed course.’’** And, again, the same expression occurs 
the day taxurac wediy eeierat;t so that even when commemorating the 
glory of a conqueror, he deemed it right to remind him of the shortness 
of the day which procured it, and consequently of that in which he 
could enjoy it. Indeed, the Pan, as a song of rejoicing for victory, 
always bore a mournful sense in reference to the battle, as well as a 
joyous sense in reference to the victory. Dionysius, after relating the 
combat of the Horatii and Curatii, and the joyful triumph of the victor, 
adds, ‘* but it was necessary that, as a man, he should not be happy 
throughout, but should excite the envy of the demon; who, when he 
had exalted him, contrary to the expectation of all, and, in a moment, 
even to the highest pinnacle of glory and happiness, cast him down the 
very same day into the miserable calamity of killing his own sister.’’} 
Cicero, in his oration for the Manilian law, furnishes a similar example 
of the scrupulous timidity and extreme caution with which it was 
deemed right to speak of the happiness of the prosperous, so fearfully 
uncertain was its stability, and so necessary did they feel it to be always 
prepared against what they termed the stroke of envious fate. ‘This, 
too, is what the lofty grave tragedians taught— 

in Reiree reayuar’ evruyovrre, [ey 

oxide The ay TeeLetey’ eb d: DUeTUYX El 

Borate vyedoowy omoyyos uaerey yeadiy. 

Kat TAUT’ exelyoy GACY olxrsiec Tony. || 
Let no one, then, ascribe melancholy to the history of the renovated 
race. Bitter and profound has been the mourning of men in all ages, 
who enjoyed not the consolations of faith, as antiquity will avow; and 
even our own times bear witness; for many of the modern writers have 
raised again the desolating voice of the heathen lamentations, if not with 
that Philocteteean clamour which old philosophy deemed unbecoming, 
yet often in a strain of even still more wild despair. What is the tone 
of modern literature and modern poetry? Does it indicate smiling 
hearts, elate with peacefulness and joy? ‘Truly it expresses only that 
sadness of the world which, in the language of the Holy Spirit, worketh 
death.§ Only those suggestions which proceed from anguish of the 
mind and humours black, that mingle with the fancy, distempered, dis- 
contented thoughts, inordinate desires, like those which moved Diceopo- 
lis to exclaim, *‘How many things devour my heart! very few things 
delight me; truly not more than four. What torment me are as numer- 
ous as the sands of the sea shore.’’** In fact, without the Catholic 
piety, the Catholic type and hope to support one, life must necessarily 


* Olymp. xiil. t Olymp. i. ¢ Antiquit. Roman. lib. iii. cap. 21. 
|| Asch. Agam. 1327, § Epist. ad Corinth. ii. 7, 
** Aristoph. Acharnensis. 


158 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


grow every day, in the estimation of the heart, more flat, stale, and 
unprofitable; for there is constantly something dropping off, something 
dying, something happening for the last time, so that every man will 
have the sad experience of the troubadour and warrior, Bertram de Born, 
who complains of this constant and rapid decay, saying, ‘‘'Tous les 
jours vous verrez qu’ aujourd’hui vaut moins qu’ hier.” Age itself disa- 
bles the mind from supporting the calamities of life, as is confessed by 
Dante in an affecting allusion to his own power of enduring the mis- 
fortunes which befell his country— 
“That chance 
Were in good time, if it befell thee now. 


Would so it were, since it must needs befall ! 
For, as time wears me, I shall grieve the more.’’* 


The dismal lucubrations of modern philosophers and poets can only 
inspire the idea of a gloomy consistory, composed of persons who, in 
their disdain of the holy discipline, sit, like Michol, full of scorn and 
sorrow,t disfigured, more than can befall spirit of happy sort. 

Alas! if men in ages of faith could, in a dream, have been brought, 
in presence of this present intellectual world, after searching with fixed 
ken, to know what place it was wherein they stood, they might have 
supposed themselves for certain on the brink of the lamentable vale— 
the dread abyss, that joins a thundrous sound of plaints innumerable. 
Dark, and deep, and thick with clouds o’erspread, their eyes might in 
vain have sought to explore its bottom, but would have discerned nought. 
What bitterness is expressed in that exclamation— 


“There are words of deeper sorrow 
Than the wail above the dead !” 


What approximation to despair in that avowal of hope being subject to 
contingency, when it is said— 


“ Circumstance, that unspiritual god 
And miscreator, makes and helps along 
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, 
Whose touch turns hope to dust, the dust we all have trod.’’t 


What a contrast to the bright visions which cheer the way of those on 
earth who afterwards are blessed, when the poet says— 


“ Standing thus by thee 

Other days come back on me 

With recollected music, though the tone 

Is changed and solemn, like the cloudy groan 
Of dying thunder on the distant wind.” 


Such is the revelation which the modern poet and modern philoso- 
pher continually makes of the state of his own heart; and is it for such 
men to shrink from consulting the history of the ages of faith through 
fear of its inspiring them with melancholy? Alas! what deeper gloom 
can come upon this poor soul than that which already encompasses it ? 

‘¢ Dost thou not hear how pitiful his moan, 


Nor mark the death which, in the torrent flood, 
Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds.” 


oe A A EE A ROE he ee 
* Hell, xxvi. t Dante, Purg. x. t Manfred, iv. | Hell, ii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 159 


Thus do these tender and elevated souls move along, thirsty, wander- 
ing, like those shades deprived of sepulture, and condemned to an eternal 
restlessness. ‘They can find no place of repose or refreshment in the 
sterile desert of the world; they sigh, without ceasing, for some, I know 
not what, mysterious power, which they call liberty or progress, hu- 
manity or reason, a kind of liberating divinity, who they think must 
eventually prevail, and it is with this vain hope that they seek to con- 
sole themselves. 

The Catholic poet, in ages of faith, trained to communion with the 
holy, assiduous at the early sacrifice, and accustomed to walk unno- 
ticed amidst the evening crowd of faithful which surrounds the divine 
altars to receive a benediction, hoped hereafter, in a future world, to 
consort for ever with the saintly spirits he had seen on earth, and to 
join the choir which keeps eternal festival in heaven: the genius of his 
song was that of one who is happy—who has no morbid peculiarities of 
thought or temper. The modern poet, nursed only amidst the wild and 
lonely scenes of nature, and familiar rather with the howl of winds, and 
the fall of mountain torrents, than with the hymn of saintly fervour, 
whose soul hath only known the sublime but sad delight of gazing on 
pathless glen and mountain high— 

‘¢ Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown, 
Mingle their echo with the eagle’s cry ;” 
though, having often felt how that sad loneliness loaded his heart, and 
how that barren desert tired his eye, when he would have wished to 
trace something that showed of life, though low and mean, yet, for the 
future, has no brighter hope, while gazing upon the ocean flood, but 
that it will be a pleasant thing to die— 


‘¢' To be resolved into the elemental wave, 
Or take his portion with the winds that rave.” 


Such was the spirit of the chorus of A’schylus— 


“ Oh! that I could as smoke arise, 
That rolls its black wreaths thro’ the air, 
Mix with the clouds, that o’er their skies 
Show their bright forms, and disappear ; 
Or, like the dust, be tost 
By every sportive wind, till all be lost !”’* 


And such is the spirit of the king of modern poets, in that most inhu- 
man aspiration : 

———_-—_— “TJ can see 

Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be 

A link reluctant in a fleshy chain, 

Class’d among creatures, when the soul can flee, 

And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain, 

Of ocean or the stars mingle, and not in vain,” 


The testimony of Palinurus, indeed, who had experience of this kind 
of dissolution, might have sufficed to show them how delusive were 
such anticipations. 


‘« Nunc me fluctus habet, versantque in littore venti, 
Eripe me his, invicte, malis ae 


-* Supplies. } Childe Harold, iii. + Mneid, vi. 362. 


160 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


The genius of melancholy must not be confounded with the melancholy 
of genius ; but to the latter it is only the ages of faith that can lay claim. 
The former, the burden of Babylon, has been the lot of humanity in 
every period of the world’s history, from the time when sin with vanity 
had filled the works of men. ‘To this fact there is express testimony in 
all ages; although, without doubt, many of these mourners, from the 
effect of anticipations, having a certain infinite evil in life, might, like 
Niobe, have been imagined turned to stone on account of eternal silence 
in affliction—voiceless because so profound, of whom the Book of God 
aftirmeth that he had stricken them, but they had not sorrowed, thatis, had 
not confessed their sorrow, yet had he brought down their heart through 
heaviness ; for to walk sorrowful all the day long is the state of sin. 

William Schlegel observes, that the conduct of the greatest portion 
of mankind who live confined within the monotonous circle of little 
insignificant occupations, can only be accounted for by the necessity 
which they feel for endeavouring to escape from that secret discontent 
which presses them down, as soon as the passions of their youth which 
made their life run like a rapid torrent, have become weak and motion- 
less. Therefore these means of distraction are employed, which are all 
designed to put in motion their slumbering faculties, by offering to them 
light difficulties. O Christ! how deep and bitter is the mourning of 
these men when they say with Montaigne, I have seen the verdure, and 
the flowers, and the fruit of life, and now I behold the withering, the 
sear and yellow leaf; or, with Philolaches in the old play, ‘“‘my heart 
bleeds when I consider what I am and what I was; that formerly no 
youth excelled more in gymnastic art, in throwing the quoit, the spear, 
and the ball, in the course in the field, and that now I am nothing.’’* 
This mourning sounds like the lugubrious cry of the birds of night, 
not the sighs of the dove which represent the blessed mourning, and 
than which nothing is more calculated to inspire peace, recollection, and 
internal joy. The world’s children professedly indeed pursue a life of 
pleasure and festivity, but if we can credit one who knew them well, 
their ** mirth hath less of play than bitterness.” 

“For many a stoic eye and aspect stern, 

Mark hearts where grief hath nought to learn ; 

And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost, 

In smiles that least befit who wear them most.’’+ 
Truly when there is a penetrating eye this reflection will be often sug- 
gested. The laugh of pleasure’s children may remind one of that inhu 
man saying of the heathen Demenetus, “may all that wish me evil 
laugh so !”’ 

Such mourning was a thing impossible to mix with blessedness. 
Nay, with spirits under its influence, as Shakspeare says in Hamlet, 
the devil is very potent, making use of those phantoms and images of 
memory, which, according to Aristotle,t melancholy persons are most 
apt to discern, in order to abuse and damn them. These are they who 
do violence to themselves and to their own blessings, wasting their 
talents in reckless lavishment and sorrowing there, where they should 
dwell in joy;|] wearing their days in wilful woe, and despising the 


bance cia ne ee RLS ETDS eel ER Oyen! OS aa 


* Plautus Mostellaria, 1,2. Byron } Tiegh aioGnzéws. || Dante, Hell, xi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 161 


grace of their Creator, sitting like the Harpies in the Hell of Dante, and 
wailing o’er the drear mystic wood; whose melancholy springs from 
no other source, as ancient writers well have shown, but the passions 
which they have not learned in their youth to master.* This is the 
mourning which mixes with the inextinguishable laughter of the suitors 
of Penelope, of whom Homer says, that while revelling with great 
triumph on the eve of their destruction, though shouts of merriment 
resounded through the hall, yet at intervals their eyes were filled with 
tears and their minds with sorrow : 


— aroe bY den opceoy 

Saneuopi wiemravro® ydoy J” dtero bupeos* 
Theoclymenus regards this as an omen, and predicts their destruction. 
Thus all mourning, all poetic melancholy, is not the presage of a bless- 
ed end. 

Beati qui lugent. But not those who mourn with the world, or who 
weep through vanity at feigned misery. St. Augustin knocked his 
breast for having wept on reading the death of Dido in Virgil, who slew 
herself on being abandoned by her lover Aineas ; because he knew well 
that such tears were without any emotion of charity, and consequently 
that they were not in any degree agreeable to God, who demands from 
us only tears of love, in confirmation of which judgment the world 
itself can be adduced in evidence, for its poets affirm that the wretched 
are malevolent and envious. 


“ Est miserorum, ut malevolentes sint atque invideant bonis.”’f 


Far, indeed, then, is such mourning from the blessing promised. It 
is the sorrow which dwells for ever upon the cursed strand that every 
man must pass who fears not God. Let us move onward, for faith 
has no entrance here. 


CHAPTER II. 


Now we are arrived at the point where our inquiries must return to 
the domain of history, in order to ascertain what was the character of 
mourning during the ages of faith, and how far the woe of the human 
heart was affected by the supernatural condition of man’s life in relation 
to the knowledge conveyed in the mysteries of religion. In the first 
place then a retrospect of Christian history will prove, that the mourn- 
ing commended from the mountain was understood to be something very 
different from the spirit which we have been observing—the mourning 
of animal men, the mourning of Babylon, without charity and without 


—_—_—_—_— ee 


* Christine di Pisan, Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage Roy Charles V. chap. x. 
+ Plautus Capteivei, iii. 4. 


Vou. Il.—21 o2 


162 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


peace. Sooth, to hear the admonitions of those whose writings influ- 
enced mankind during the ages of faith, and to mark their countenances 
as described so graphically in ancient books, one might at first suppose 
that the blessing had not been pronounced in their estimation upon the 
state of mourners ; but upon that of those who always rejoiced, and 
who, like the followers of old Pythagoras, considered sadness a vice 
and a disgrace to be hidden from the eyes of men, for if it ever came 
upon a Pythagorean, he was to withdraw himself from all observation, 
and set about removing it by using the remedies prescribed by his dis- 
cipline, remedies which indeed could hardly have been efficacious, but 
the recourse to which proves the just abhorrence in which melancholy 
was held. What was the character of mourning during the ages of 
faith? ‘Truly one may feel at a loss how to answer this question ; for 
the first impressions consequent upon a study of their history, as far as 
it is comprised in the thoughts, and doctrines, and manners of men, 
would lead us to conclude, that the race of mourners had disappeared ; 
and that within the promised land, nothing was ever found but smiles 
and joy. Where shall we look for mourners? We may conceive at 
once that the task is difficult; for how can there be melancholy where 
the Catholic religion sways, which ever invigorates men with hope that 
leads to blissful end? How great is that hope, and how it doth flourish 
in them, even its adversaries admit; for the only question with them, 
they say, is to account for the exemption of Catholics from despair and 
trouble of mind?* Hope excludes sadness, and the church militant 
hath in every age armed all her sons with hope. Let us, however, 
investigate more narrowly. 

Burton, who wrote a professed treatise upon melancholy, would direct 
us to the abodes of monks and friars, as being men whom he affirms to 
be continually under its dreadful influence. But lo! the fact is so con- 
trary to his representation, that cheerfulness appears as one of the first 
results from entering the pleasant cloister’s pale. ‘Do you see these 
novices ?”’ asks St. Bernard, ‘they are but just come, but just converted. 
What appears in them is only a flower, for the season of fruit is not yet 
arrived. ‘This new conversation is a flower. They assume a face of 
discipline and a good composition of their whole body. I grant that 
what appears is pleasing—that greater negligence of exterior dress— 
fewer words—a more joyful countenance—a more bashful look; yet 
these are but flowers, and rather the promise of fruit than fruit itself.’’t 
Does length of time, think you, and a progress in that course of perfect 
life, produce a change in this respect? Hear what instructions and 
doctrines belonged to the monastic discipline. «'The Holy Ghost can- 
not suffer the odious sadness of the children of the world to remain in 
the soul of his servants.”” He who thus speaks is the monk who wrote 
that discourse to a nun which is commonly ascribed to St. Bernard. 
‘‘Let a spiritual joy remain always within you as a testimony that you 
are at peace with God. This innocent and tranquil joy is an assured 
mark of virtue and an earnest of sanctity. If it were not so, David 
would not have said, rejoice ye just in the Lord and leap for joy.”— 
“There is even a joy natural but innocent, which is a gift of heaven ; 


* Burton Anat. of Mel. iii. 4. { S. Bernardi super Cantica Serm. Ixiii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 163 


a precious fruit of peace with God,” says the holy Capuchin friar Lom- 
bez, in his treatise on the joy of the soul. ‘* You destroy the divine 
image in your soul by sadness,’’ he continues, ‘*God is joy.* ‘Servite 
Domino: in letitia.’? All nature rejoices in its Creator, and would you 
remain in asad silence? ‘The saints are always full of joy and cheer- 
fulness ; in the midst of vast deserts and solitudes, under persecution 
and suffering, joy is on their countenances. Itis joy which makes the 
heart fear God. ‘ Letetur cor meum, ut timeat nomen tuum.’ ’’T 

John, the monk of Cluny, in his life of St. Odo, the second abbot of 
that house, says, ‘‘ His words were always full of rejoicing; insomuch, 
that he used to constrain us, through excess of joy, to laugh, which 
mirth he would moderate with admonitions ; but his spiritual cheerful- 
ness diffused internal joy through our hearts. Not being allowed to tes- 
tify our feelings openly, we used secretly to kiss his vestments.” But 
this is an investigation which may be terminated without waiting to con- 
sult history; for, if in the present age, the manners and countenance of 
the religious in monasteries bespeak invariably the sweet influence of 
constant internal rejoicing, and no other inference is possible after ob- 
serving them, there can be no danger of error in concluding that it was 
the same in the ages of greatest faith; for then the world was more fre- 
quently opposed by forms of attraction, and consequently there were 
fewer obstacles to the peace and joy which religion can impart to men. 

Will the moderns look for sadness in the air of those pilgrims, who 
are the objects of so much of their pity? Let them refer to the portrait 
of one who was a saint, a model and example of all pilgrims. St. Wil- 
frid, afterwards Bishop of York, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and it is 
expressly related, that on the way he was to all men affable, and that he 
never contracted a sad countenance.|| 

If they repair to the solitary hermit’s dwelling in the woods and caves 
of the rocks, they will not have better success. Sebastian Francus Von 
Word, in the third part of his Chronicle, expressly testifies of the holy 
hermit Nicolas Von der Flue, that he was never melancholy, but always 
joyous. But surely it will be said, we cannot be at a loss for examples 
of sadness, if we turn to the solemn Doctors and Holy Fathers of the 
Church, who spent their lives in the defence and illustration of the Chris- 
tian faith? The very aspect of their volumes denotes men abandoned to 
the cloom of interminable toil. Truly the difficulty remains the same as 
before. St. Gregory reckons sadness among the seven capital sins.§ St. 
Chrysostom’s chief object in writing to Olympias, the deaconess, is to 
extirpate the melancholy to which she had been unhappily a prey. ‘* Not 
only do I wish to deliver you from sadness, but also to fill your soul with 
a pure and never-ending joy;”’ it is thus he writes to her. ‘* Sadness,” 
he continues, ‘is the most intolerable torment of the soul,—a grief be- 
yond all expression,—a punishment more cruel than all punishments. 
It is like a worm, which gnaws not only our body, but whatever is most 
intimate within us. It is a night never-ending, a horrible tempest, a 
fever which consumes secretly. ‘To those seized with it, the sun, the 


ee 


* Traité de la joie de l’ame, 2. 4. fT Ps. 85. t Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, 33. 
| Mabillon, Acta S. Ordinis Bened. Sze. iv. pars. 1. 
§ C. xxxi. lib. xxxi. in Exod. 


164 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


air, however pure, the most beautiful azure of the sky, become a burden, 
and the day becomes night; which made the prophet say, ‘The sun 
shall set for them at mid-day.’* No, the deep shades of night are not 
deeper than those of sadness, horrible night, insupportable night, night 
sinistrous and threatening, refusing to yield to those who would dispel 
it, but attaching itself to the soul which it has once seized upon, and © 
never letting go its hold until this soul chooses to make use of its wis- 
dom to escape from its power.”? You have heard how they speak. Nor 
is the result different if we refer to those ecclesiastical canons, which, 
from their title at least, might lead one to think that they had relation 
unto mourning. In the ancient Penitential of Angers, which happens to 
present itself first to my view, I find reckoned among the capital crimes 
‘‘the sadness of the world, worldly sorrow.’ Not even the ascetic dis- 
cipline will yield us any different result; for universally it rested upon 
the principle of that sacred text—« Piety will fill the heart with a joyous 
spirit and with gladness.”’t ‘Sadness proceedeth from self-love; and 
joy from the love of God.’ So we read in the Meditations for the En- 
glish College at Lisbon: «The fruit is like the tree; that is, the joy is 
like to the love whence it proceedeth: true love is like to the thing 
loved; that is, like to God; and hence true joy must be like to God: that 
is, immortal, most copious, most beauteous, and most sweet.”’t The 
Church herself, in her solemn offices, prays to be delivered from pres- 
ent sadness, and to be conducted to the possession of eternal joy. That 
faithful spouse of Jesus Christ never mourns long without returning to 
the expressions of transport. Thus, in the middle of Lent, she changes 
the penitential tones to sing Letare Jerusalem ; and, in a similar manner, 
she interrupts the solemn chaunts of Advent to sing Gaudete. What is 
very remarkable too, the world itself, if considered in reference to the 
scenes of chivalrous life, seems, during these ages, to have ceased to fav- 
our the melancholy which is its natural companion; so that its maxims 
were directed to the same end as those of the spiritual society, and its 
ways delivered from all horrid exhibitions of desperate woe. If you will 
hear fable, which, at that epoch, peculiarly borrowed its language from 
living manners, you will find King Pharamond, in Gyron le Courtois, re- 
proving Messire du Lac, for indulging in a sorrow which was unbecom- 
ing. ‘Se Dieu me sault si bon chevalier comme vous estes ne deveroit 
mye trop penser pour nulle avanture de ce monde. Et certes vous pen- 
sez orendroit plus que a preudhomme ne convient.’’—« Sire, (replied 
Messire du Lac) mon cueur si est seigneur de moy, mais je ne suis mye 
seigneur de luy.’’|| You will hear the hermit Peter reproving the vain 
grief of Tancred on the death of Clorinda, as offending against the spirit 
of his order : 


“ His vanity with grave advice reproved, 

And told what mourning Christian knights behoved, 
-O Tancred, Tancred! how far different 

From thy beginnings good these follies be! 

Thou dost refuse of Heav’n the proffer’d grace, 

And ’gainst it still rebel with sinful ire; 

O wretch! O whither doth thy rage thee chase ? 

Refrain thy grief, bridle thy fond desire : 


Se hess ass NEeNNEe 


* Amos, viii. 9. t Eccles, i. 18. t Part iv.c. 2. | F. Ixxxviii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 165 


At hell’s wide gate vain sorrow doth thee place. 
Sorrow, misfortune’s son, despair’s foul sire : 

O see thine ill, thy plaint and woe refrain, 

The guides to death, to hell, and endless pain.”* 


During the middle ages, rare was the crime of Piero delle Vigne, who, 
when his glad honours changed to bitter woes, with soul disdainful and 
disgusted, sought refuge in death from scorn, and became, just as he 
was, unjust toward himself. It was so rare, that men considered it in 
the light of a prodigy. Peter Damien mentions that Hugo, abbot of 
Cluny, used to relate to him a strange example of a certain stranger, 
who destroyed himself through the impulse of the demon. ‘There was 
a Bishop,” he says, ‘travelling, who came to the banks of a river, 
where he halted to repose for a short time. As he was resting there, he 
thought he heard a voice, proceeding as if from the flood, which said, 
‘Hora venit, homo non venit.’ The Bishop shortly after observed a 
man on horseback, who came galloping to the brink, as if resolved to 
make his horse plunge into the stream. By the Bishop’s directions the 
attendants, who rushed forwards, succeeded in preventing him, though 
he persisted in crying out, ‘Let me go—I must hasten on the king’s 
errand; an inevitable necessity bids me proceed.’ The holy Bishop 
constrained him-to take up his abode with him that night. When every 
one was sunk in sleep, the stranger plunged his head into a vessel of 
water which stood in the chamber, and suffocated himself.’’t 

The epoch of the great apostasy of the sixteenth century was distin- 
guished by the frequency of this fearful crime. Petrus Crinitus men- 
tions that in France certain women had lately committed suicide, throw- 
ing themselves into rivers, which gave occasion to several learned men 
to investigate the cause of such a phenomenon, which could only be 
ascribed to the power of the stars, and to some influence of the air im- 
pelling men to madness, and he is obliged to recur to the ancients for 
similar instances. He mentions, indeed, that a philosopher at Florence, 
Peter Leonio, and another scholar, deeply versed in Aristotle and Hip- 
pocrates, had lately drowned themselves, but it was through an excess 
of madness, in which they ought to have been bound with chains.{ 

What, then, becomes of our project, to illustrate the manners of the 
blessed race from the history and learning of the ages of faith, if on the 
one hand we are told, by the voice of unerring wisdom, that they who 
mourn are blessed; and on the other, if we can find no trace or sanction 
of mourning in the ages when we suppose faith to have principally flour- 
ished? Softly, my gentle comrade; all is not yet seen: we have as 
yet been confronted only with the mourning of the world: and how 
should it be wonderful, or a source of inquietude, that we should have 
met with no trace of such a spirit in the manners or discipline of those 
who had renounced the world, during ages of faith? It has not been 
demonstrated, that the third blessed sentence from the Mount fell a 
powerless sound upon the ear of the humble and the meek, or that it 
found nothing in their character or existence to which it was applicable. 
They were cheerful and full of joyful peace: but it does not follow that 


a a a anne eS ie aaa 


* Jerus. Deliv. xii. 86. + Bibliothec. Cluniacens, 438. 
+ De Honesta Disciplina, lib. iii. c. 9. 


166 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


they were deprived of the third beatitude : they did not mourn with the 
world; but we must not infer that they rejoiced with it. Neither earth- 
ly sorrow nor earthly joy, in the perverted sense of that expression, be- 
longed to them, but the mourning of holy exiles, resting in this Inn of 
grief, the sighs of the innocent dove, longing after its home and country, 
were no less characteristic of their whole existence than were the peace 
and joy of renovated and Spiritualized creatures restored to the favour 
of their Creator, and destined to dwell hereafter in everlasting gladness. 
It is not to be imagined for an instant that their cheerfulness bore any 
resemblance to the disposition of those persons whose lips seem always 
moved to laughter, or to provoking it in others. Though totally free 
from that Jansenian gloom, which pervades the thoughts of a celebrated 
philosopher of later times, there was nothing vulgar or ignoble in their 
Sweet and joyous serenity: it would lead no one to conceive that they 
could ever inwardly breathe a prayer like that of the parasite of Plau- 
tus: **Grant me riches, praise, profit, play, mirth, festivity, feasting, 
pomp, pleasure, revelling, satiety, joy:’’* but it might remind one of 
the tone of those solemn quires described by Dante,— 

“and lo! 

A sound of weeping and a song: < My lips, 

O Lord!’ and these so mingled, it gave birth 

To pleasure and to pain.” + 


Even the ancient sages, who, like the Pythagoreans, declared open 
war against melancholy, would not have approved of the former temper: 
they indeed pretended to possess divine remedies against the wounds of 
sadness!+ and Aristoxenus affirmed that they used to refrain from all 
lamentations and tears; but as a general and pervading tone, they would 
have rejected utterly and with scorn the pert and nimble spirit of mirth, 
at least as it appears in the common laugher. Socrates, showing that 
at the last the souls of men will correspond in appearance to their char- 
acter in life, says that Thersites will be seen in the form of an ape. || 
“It may be well,” says the Athenian in Plato, ‘‘to make oneself ac- 
quainted with things ridiculous, in order that one may the better learn 
what is opposed to them; but it is not possible to practise both, and par- 
take in the least degree of virtue.” § Plato would not allow the inextin- 
guishable laughter of the Homeric gods even among the men of his re- 
public. "AAAG Maly Godt pirophawras ye deh eivett. overs dee dyGeuzreuc aZious rdyou xeaTou~ 
Hevous Ud yerwrce dy Tie molt doredenréoy, ** While on earth, heroes of his type 
bore that countenance which Dante ascribes to those four mighty spirits 
which he beheld within the awful porch, which were of semblance 
neither sorrowful nor glad.tt The sweet countenance of blessed spirits, 
bespoke, no doubt, an abundant felicity; but still, it indicated the con- 
stant exercise of mystic joy, tempering the sweet with bitter. « The 
joy of the just,” says Drexelius, ‘is not that of the gay and frivolous, 
occupied with Saturnalian festivities and Bacchanalian orgies.”’ ‘+ Pla- 
cidum et occultum illud gaudium est, et cum gravitate, imo severitate 
conjunctum.”’tt Thus St. Jerome describes that perfect priest, Nepo- 


* Capteivei, iv. 1. t Purg. xxiii. + Jamblich. de Pythagoric. vita, cap. 15, 16.31. 
| De Repub. lib. x. § De Legibus, lib. vii. ** De Repub. lib. iii. 
Tt Hell. iv. ++ De Conformit. Voluntat. Hum. cum Div. lib. iii. 2. 


AGES OF FAITH. 167 


tianus—‘‘ Gravitatem morum hilaritate frontis temperabat.’’* In the 
restored and sanctified nature was discernible, to the more instructed 
and penetrating eye, a mourning that may be termed natural, inasmuch 
as, although nature was repaired and assisted in them, it was not unmade 
or condemned utterly in any of its principles as false and vicious. 
There was discernible also the mourning of wisdom, the mourning of 
love, the mourning of piety, the mourning of penitents, the mourning 
of exiles, who had to meet death before they could reach their country. 
On each of these points, with history and the learning of the ages of 
faith for our guide, let us briefly dwell. And first, what is to be said 
respecting this natural mourning, distinct from the mourning of mere 
animals of earth, and yet which, in some respects, was of it, since it 
grew out of the relations and circumstances of the present existence ? 
It would be difficult to find words more exact and beautiful to describe 
it than those which the Church uses, in that sublime prayer of prepara- 
tion offered by the priest, when he confesses his unworthiness to dis- 
charge so holy an office, and beseeches God that his sins may not be 
the means of rendering the great. sacrifice unprofitable to others: “ for, 
O Lord,” he adds, ‘I bear, if thou vouchsafest to behold favourably, 
the tribulations of the people, the perils of nations, the groans of cap- 
tives, the miseries of orphans, the necessities of those that travel, the 
wants of the weak, the despair of the languid, the defects of old men, 
the sighs of youths, the vows of virgins, the lamentations of widows.” 

Such is the view of the state of humanity which the Church presents 
to her minister when she supposes him about to celebrate her consoling 
mysteries; and it does not appear that philosophers or poets, during 
the middle ages, were inclined to take a different, even in their lightest 
compositions. Gouget remarks of the celebrated poet, Alain Chartier, 
that he alludes to the calamities of life, even in those pieces which he 
seemed at first intending to consecrate to joy alone. ‘Thus one of them 
concludes :— 


«‘ Adieu chansons que voulentiers chantoye 
Et joyeulx dicts oti je me delectoye 
Tel rit joyeulx, qui aprés dolent pleure 
Rien ne m est bon, n’ autre bien n’ assaveure 
Fors seulement I’ attente que je meure ; 
Et me tarde que briefment viengne Pheure 
Qu’ aprés ma mort en Paradis la voye.”’{ 


“Grief” prompted him, as he says, to write his most considerable 
work in prose, which is entitled ‘‘ Hope, or the Consolation of the three 
Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.” 


“ Par douleur ay commencé ce livre 
Je souloye ma jeunesse acquitter 

A joyeuses escriptures dicter. 

Or me convient autre chose tissir, 

De cueur dolent ne pouroit joye yssir.” 


Under a joyous title, we are often presented with serious meditations, 
as in the work entitled Le Passetems de tout homme et de toute femme, 
composed by Brother Guillaume Alexis, commonly called the good 


es Se ee ae a a ee i i de in ei a ae eb os abel 


* Epist. xxxv. + Bibliotheque Frangais, tom. ix. 164, 


168 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


monk of Lire, an abbey in Normandy. The pastime alluded to proves 
to be nothing else but the miseries belonging to the human condition. 
The author follows man from his cradle to his death-bed, and shows 
that, in every stage of his course, he is called to suffer.* Such strains 
used to echo under the chivalrous halls of our ancestors, even at the 
festal hour: for perfectly in character with them was that simple lay of 
Albert Graeme in Branksome Tower, when he sung of the English lady 
bright, that would marry the knight of Scotland.— 
“Blithely they saw the rising sun 
When he shone fair on Carlisle wall ; 


But they were sad ere day was done, 
Though love was still the lord of all.” 


Do you mark how they correspond with the religious view of life? 


“They touch the chords of joy, but low 
And mournful answer notes of woe.” 

Indeed this view of man’s condition corresponds with Nature in her 
noblest estate; for they whose spirits seem most elastic, cheerful, and 
buoyant, by a certain apparent contradiction in their structure, are always 
fond of what is solemn, and of lingering amidst the tombs. And hence, 
to such minds, the charm of the Catholic religion, which is at one time 
joyous as the lark singing at heaven’s gates beneath the morning cloud; 
and at another, solemn as the sound of the distant bell, or of the waving 
grove under the wind of night: while Protestantism is always sad or 
always dissipated. The spirit of Catholicism is in harmony with that 
of a genuine drama, which is tragic and yet infinitely mild,—a mixture 
of joy and sorrow. What means the Church in bidding the priest to 
bear in mind the sighs of youths? It is that she has deeply observed 
nature ; for youth the most joyous season in life,—is that in which men 
are enamoured with seeing sad pageants of men’s miseries, with tales 
of woe,—and when they take more delight in weeping than in words; 
when, according to Shakspeare, they are sad as night only from wanton- 
ness. As if they who were most capable of enjoying the rich banquet 
of life, found a pleasure all the while in knowing that, even on such an 
earth as this, they were in a world of woe. As poor Duncan says, 
‘Their plenteous joys, wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves in 
drops of sorrow.”” The poet’s child is one who has, like Wilfred, 

“A heart too soft, from early life, 
To hold with Fortune needful strife ; 
Hour after hour who loved to pore 
On Shakspeare’s rich and varied lore, 
But turn’d from martial scenes and light, 
From Falstaff’s feast and Percy’s fight, 
To ponder Jacques’ moral strain, 
And muse with Hamlet, wise in vain ; 


And weep himself to soft repose 
O’er gentle Desdemona’s woes.” > 


It is one who might say of himself to Ossian, in the words of Dela- 


martine, ‘* My heart is yet warm with the fire of youth; I have not thy 
years, but I have already thy sadness.” In fact, all passions to which 


* Massieu, Hist. de la Poesie Frangaise, 35. t Rokeby. 


AGES OF FAITH. 169 


youth is subject, end like a tragedy: as Novalis says, ‘All defective 
things to which nature introduces them, end with death. So the philos- 
ophy of sensation, of fancy, and of ideas. All poesy, which is to them 
so dear, has a tragic tenor. All genuine jest, for which they have so 
true a perception, has a serious foundation.”’* ‘In the primitive time 
of fancy,’’ says Frederick Schlegel, ‘‘ we find that the elegiac was the 
predominant tone of poesy, as if a melancholy remembrance of the past 
godly world, and heroic age, or as a sorrowful echo of the lost paradi- 
siacal innocence and heavenly state; or in a still higher and more gen- 
eral sense, as the forlorn lamentation over the blessed childhood of the 
whole creation, before the spiritual world had been torn asunder by divi- 
sions,—before the beginning of all evil, and the consequent calamities 
of nature.’’t 

A similar tone may be traced in the poetic compositions which were 
most passionately loved during the middle ages. Many of those wild 
and tender chaunts were sad as the song of Linus, or the melancholy 
Carian strain on Phrygian flute—sad as the song of Hylas sung at foun- 
tains in the Mysian land, or the song of the beautiful Bormus, whose 
watery death was deplored by the husbandmen of Mariandyne on the 
flute in the middle of summer. The thoughts of men were then but little 
occupied with the present in comparison with the past and future; and 
in this respect, the spirit of the Catholic religion would subject every 
one to the sneers of such writers as Atheneus, who laughs at Plato, 
calling him «‘memory’s friend,” ¢ +i semuordvn giass. Religion, indeed, ex- 
pressly recommended the mourning which springs from memory, and, 
in the beautiful words of St. Augustin, distinguished it from the sadness 
of the world. <«‘Let us sit and weep, remembering Sion. For many 
weep with Babylonian tears, who also rejoice with a Babylonian joy. 
We ought to weep but from remembering Sion. The waters of Babylon 
flow and pass. Let us weep by them, but beware how we enter them, 
lest we should be borne away and swallowed up in them. Let us sit by 
them and weep; and we shall weep if we remember Sion. O that peace 
which we shall see with God! O that peace and holy equality of an- 
gels! O that beautiful spectacle, that transcendant vision !”’t 

Music, poetry, and painting, during the ages of faith, seem only the 
expression of desire, of longing; and if any should adopt the opinion of 
Winkelman respecting the effects of such melancholy, which he ascribes 
to the Etrurians, and by which he attempts to account for their not 
having surpassed mediocrity in the fine arts, and should, on the same 
grounds, deny that our ancestors could have possessed the soft emotion 
which renders the spirit perfectly susceptible of the beautiful, I would 
refer him to the reply which is made by Pignotti, in his «‘ History of 
Tuscany,” where he observes, ‘‘That the acute and deep sensations 
which Winkelman acknowledges belong to the melancholy disposition, 
are so far from being, as he pretends, incompatible, that they are, on the 
contrary, inseparably connected with a lively imagination, the first ori- 
gin of the fine arts, and that melancholy and religious compassion char- 
acterize the greatest masterpieces which enrich the Vatican. ‘To the 


* Novalis Schriften, ii. 233. + Philosophie der Sprache, 123. 
+ S. Augustini Tractat. in Psalm. cxxxvi. 


Vol. I1—22 


170 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


deep humanity of the Catholic religion belonged necessarily the melan- 
choly of compassion for the natural calamities of man. That sorrow, to 
which kings would bow, was a worthy cause for defiling the serenest 
eye. Every cloister and every castle had its tale, that had made mourn 
both wise and simple; for, however calamitous, all events were to be 
related, that none of the gifts of Heaven might be concealed from men. 
And now, if I were to select examples from the chronicles of the middle 
ages, ‘‘ methinks,” as Homer says, ‘the light of the sun would set up- 
on our weeping.” Lionel Woodville, Bishop of Salisbury, died through 
sorrow and pity for the fate of others. ‘This member of an illustrious 
and unhappy family, was brother to Edward the Fourth’s queen, the 
most unfortunate in English history. His own fortunes, being a Church- 
man, were not overthrown in the wreck of that family ; but when Buck- 
ingham, who had married one of his sisters, was beheaded in the market 
place of Salisbury, the Bishop did not long survive the grief of this last 
affliction. Life was full of lamentations, which found an echo in hearts, 
which only had more concern for others, from having renounced self- 
love. Who knows not these things?—who has not pity ?—would be 
the language of those who might ‘feel themselves,” as Dante says, ‘on 
all sides well squared to fortune’s blows.” 


** Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora.” 


We shall see, in a future place, that this was not a sterile compas- 
sion; but it will serve, at present, to explain why, even from natural 
causes, the noblest spirits, during the ages of faith, appeared in the 
character of mourners; and that they did so, we have the express attes- 
tation of history. ‘ He was of a melancholy turn of mind,” says Fon- 
tenelle. of the great Pierre Corneille ; and, speaking of John de Medicis, 
Machiavel says, ‘‘ Though there was a little melancholy in his disposi- 
tion, he knew how to please in conversation.”’* «+ Rard quidem letus,’’ 
says Petrarch, describing the state of his own mind during the course 
of his correspondence with Socrates, * mcestus sepe.’’t Le Banni de 
Liesse was the title assumed by John Meschinot sieur de Mortieres, a 
French poet, contemporary of Chastellain, to express his affliction for 
the misfortunes of the dukes of Bretagne.t Antonio Fulgoso, that noble 
poet of Genoa, was surnamed Fileremo, on account of his fondness for 
seclusion ; and Hugues Salel, in the reign of Francis I., in his poem 
*¢Qn the Misery and Inconstancy of Human Life,’ lays it down as a 
maxim, that we should often choose mournful subjects for contemplation, 
because long continued joy becomes wearisome.| It is questionable, 
whether Shakspeare meant to convey a censure when he speaks of one 
‘¢so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth.” Triste et pensif was 
the device adopted by Michael Marot; and the same tone of melancholy 
which Charles Duke of Orleans ascribes to himself, in that affecting 
poem, which begins— 

‘ Laissez moy penser A mon aise; 
Helas! donnez m’en le loisir—” 


and which seemed so constant an attendant on pre-eminence, that every 


eatin ethctelagc ees vali ASE GT See ee 
* Hist. of Florence, lib. iv. { Pref. in Epist. Pam. 
t Gouget Bibliotheque Francais, ix. 404. || Id. tom. xii. 8, 


AGES OF FAITH. 171 


man in high honour seemed, in his very countenance, to proclaim the 
justice of S. Bonaventure’s exclamation, ‘‘ Quis in honore sine dolore 
esse poterit?”’ ‘That tone is spoken of by Fenelon, in describing James 
Il. of England, as something full of dignity and meekness: he terms it, 
‘¢Son sérieux doux et complaisant.’’* Dante had no need to paint from 
his imagination in that affecting description of one spirit that he meets 
in purgatory— 
‘“‘ Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends, 


And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear, 
How yet the regal aspect he retains.’ 


If these few instances are not sufficient to show the general character 
of noble minds, in this respect, during the middle ages, it will be easy 
for any one to multiply them, by referring to our ancient literature, 
which supplies similar portraits at almost every page. ‘This melancholy 
of Catholics during ages of faith, whether considered as the melancholy 
of genius, of honour, of compassion, of love, or of piety, had a distinct- 
ive character, which totally separated it from the gloom of heathen or 
modern times. It was the melancholy recommended by the Apostle, 
‘‘ quasi tristes, semper autem gaudentes:’’ it was without malice, ran- 
cour, pusillanimity, despair, tepidity, or wandering of mind; and, there- 
fore, it was not involved in the condemnation passed by holy men, like 
the Abbot Raban Maur, though that were directed against melancholy.t 
The necessity for human suffering, so obvious to reason, that the Pytha- 
goreans used to say, ‘‘Men ought to welcome punishment, since they 
came into the world only in order to be punished,”’|| is involved in the 
mystery of the fall; and during ages of faith, the light affliction which 
arose from it, for a moment, was received by mourners with pious re- 
signation. Let us hear them speak of it, that we may understand what 
a deep sense they entertained of this mystery. ‘The Master of the Sen- 
tences, in laying down a threefold liberty, observes, that the last which 
he terms the liberty from misery can only be obtained in the future 
beautitude.§ Hugo de St. Victor wrote a treatise, entitled, «Cur flet 
qui gaudet,” alluding to the joy of the Church, which in this valley of 
tears, is never without weeping; and the holy Fathers teach, that the 
perfect prayer is mixed with joy and sadness. ‘The sweetness of 
honey,”’ says St. Jerome, ‘‘ was to be tempered by art before it could 
be offered in sacrifice to God, for nothing voluptuous pleases God— 
nothing which has not in it something of austere truth. The paschal 
of Christ was to be eaten with bitter herbs.”’** Nay, even in relation to 
the mere temporal felicity of man, mark how mysterious a thing is woe. 
Cardan could attest the fact, which furnishes an axiom in the science of 
the saints; for, he says, ‘‘sine malorum experientia nihil esse dulce 
homini.” tt The poet goes further still, where he shows how soon men 
begin to loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof ‘‘a little more than a little 
is by much too much.’”’ Unheeding such refined considerations, men, 


* Epitres de Fenelon, 103. + Purg. xviii. 

+ Rabani Mauri de Institutione Clericorum, lib. iii. cap. 38. 

|| Jamblich. de Pathagoric. vita, cap. 18. 

§ Petri Lombardi. lib. xi. Distinct. 25. ** S$. Hieronymi Epist. xxiii. 
tt Prudentia Civilis, cap. 4. 


172 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


in the middle ages, were at all times ready to welcome sorrow as a 
blessed thing; either receiving it in the spirit, and, with the words of 
S. Lupe, when he saluted Attila, exclaiming, ‘+ Salve, flagellum Dei,’’>— 
or in reference only to the future compensation which would follow it. 
If they pretended not to be able to walk erect on the waves of the tribula- 
tion of this life, as our Lord walked on the sea, yet, at least, they felt 
that they could (as St. Augustin says) be borne over them on the wood 
of the cross, and on the model of Christ crucified. «Scientia sancto- 
rum est,” says St. Bernard, ‘hic temporaliter cruciari, et delectari in 
eternum.”’* <«« Lazarus, merely because he bore sadness and affliction 
with courage, obtained the same abode as the great patriarch, whose 
life had been one series of the most brilliant actions. I will add to 
this,”” continues St. Chrysostom, ‘one consideration which, from being 
new and perhaps foreign from the common manner of thinking, is no 
less true; it is this, that even when we should have accomplished some 
eminent deed of virtue, if labour, if danger, if misfortune, be not, in 
some measure, mixed with it, the recompence will not be great. The 
Scripture does not say, that each one will be recompensed in proportion 
to his virtuous actions; but rather in proportion to the quantum of 
adversity which he will have supported. ‘Thus, St. Paul enumerating 
the subjects of his glorying, gloried chiefly in his having suffered so 
much; for, after saying, ‘Are they ministers of Jesus Christ? TI dare 
to say it, fam more;’ and to prove that he is really superior to them, 
he does not say, I preached the word of God to so many millions of 
men; but, keeping silence as to his virtues and his other merits, he 
gives a picture of all the calamities he has endured:—*1I have lived in 
the midst of labours, in prisons, and the rest.? Do you see what suf- 
ferings were here, and how many occasions of glorifying? Presently, 
he adds to these the acts of virtue, and, in enumerating them, he makes 
us see that still sufferings are to him a more solid title than all the rest, 
for it is always in the same sense. ‘ Which of you is sick, and I am not 
also ;’ he does not say, and I do not endeavour to heal him; but, and I 
am not also. ‘Which of you is scandalized, and I am not consumed 
interiorly:’ he does not say, and I do not deliver him from the scandal: 
but, and I do not take share in his pains, and in his sorrow.’t— 
‘There is no motive,” says St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his letter to 
_ Thecla, ‘‘more proper to make us courageously endure calamities, and 
to raise us above the generality of men in affliction, than the remem- 
brance of the promises which we made to God, and the hopes which 
we conceived when we first embraced the true philosophy. Was it, 
then, our object to live in abundance and in riches, to taste the vain joys 
and the insane delights of the world, to strew our path with flowers ; 
or rather, on the contrary, did we not expect tribulations, pains, anguish, 
and to endure all things in hopes of future good? Anh! it is this last lot, 
not the former, which we were taught to reckon upon. Let us take 
care, then, how we violate the covenant that we made with God, by 
wishing to possess, at the same time, the advantages and the goods of 
this world, and to preserve the hope of the future. Let us leave our 
conventions standing, and let us support all the woes of life, in hope of 


re eh tepinreinir pion fn! ED AN SS Se 


* Serm. 21. de divers, + St. Chrysostom, Epist. to Olympias Deaconess. ° ’ 


AGES OF FAITH. 173 


the joys of eternity.’’ Although the whole subject of human suffering 
was involved in mystery, yet the advantages resulting from it were 
most clearly discernible with the light of faith. «One single ‘ thanks 
be to God!’ and ‘blessed be God!’ uttered in adversity, is of more 
avail,’’ says Father Avila, ‘¢‘than a thousand thanksgivings in the day 
of prosperity ;’’ and, therefore, as St. Aloysius Gonzaga used to say, 
‘There is no more evident mark of a man’s being a saint, and of the 
number of the elect, than to behold him of a devout life, and, at the 
same time, exercised with desolations, sufferings, and tribulations.”’ 
Ah! how much wiser Job in calamity than Adam in Paradise! The 
one says, **Sicut Domino placuit ita factum est!’ the other, «‘ Vocem 
{uam audivi et abscondi me!”’* But as this will appear still more 
clearly when we have proceeded further, let it be observed here, that 
the advantages of suffering were not altogether concealed from the an- 
cients, who could only judge by the light of reason. Would you hear 
the heroic chaunt of the poet, whose lofty muse was to inspire conquer- 
ors? QO, son of Philanor! you would have led an obscure life, and 
have never won a glorious renown, wasting your strength in ignoble 
contests in your domestic circle, like the cock that conquers in its fami- 
liar court, unless banishment, consequent on an insurrection, had driven 
you from your country— 
Ei fan TraTkS ayTIAvEes 
nyo hes GueeTe TaTeds, 

Now you are a glorious victor in the Olympic contest, as well as hav- 
ing received twice the Pythic, and once the Isthmian crown.t With- 
out labour, no one was ever illustrious nor ever shall be.t If there be 
any happiness with men, it does not appear without labour;|| but a life 
void of danger was granted neither to Peleus acides, nor to the divine 
Cadmus, yet they are both said to have obtained the highest felicity of 
mortals; who both heard the Muses singing in the mountains, and 
within the seven-gated Thebes; who both entertained the gods with 
hospitable rites; who both beheld the kingly sons of Saturn on their 
golden seats, and received from them nuptial gifts.§ The lessons of 
the ancient sage were to the same effect. Socrates speaks of banish- 
ment and bad health, as among the few causes which can enable men to 
pursue philosophy with a true spirit. <‘*'There remains, then,”’ saith 
he, ‘* but a very small number of men consorting with philosophy in a 
worthy manner; either men who have been punished with exile, of 
generous manners, and well educated, through a want of the causes 
which corrupt, so that the philosophic nature remains in them, or else 
men whom the bridle of our dear friend Theages is able to restrain ; 
for 'Theages is surrounded, and furnished on all sides with things suffi- 
cient to make him fall from philosophy,’ such as riches, friends, hon- 
ours, &c.; ‘*but the continual suffering of his body from bad health, 
restrains him from political affairs and corruptions.”** Poets might 
have found examples in their own walk to justify a similar conclusion 
respecting what the child of the muses ought to desire. ‘The ancients 


* Drexelius de Conformitate Human. Voluntatis cum Divin. lib. iv. 2. 

t Pindar, Olymp. xii. t Id. Pyth. Od. v. || Id. Pyth. Od. xii. 

§ Jd. Pyth. Od. iii. ; ** Plato de Repub. lib. vi. 
le 


174 MORES. CATHOLICI; OR, 


had instances before them, like that of Dante, who finished his sub- 
lime work while in exile, wandering and unhappy, through the differ- 
ent states of Italy. 

The disputants in Plato’s VIIth Book on Laws, agree in the opinion 
that the right and most happy life takes a middle course between pleas- 
ure an@ grief, neither pursuing the former nor avoiding the latter, but 
desiring the medium; and that all men should fly from the life of unmin- 
gled pleasure, as well as that of pain. Aristotlé admits, that in suffer- 
ings the beautiful may shine forth, when any one bears great calamities 
with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of 
mind.* And Plutarch lays it down as a criterion to determine what 
progress we make in virtue, to see whether we prefer mourning to fes- 
tivity; or, to use his own words, whether we incline to excess in the 
Dorian harmony, which is grave and devout, or in the Lydian, which 
is gay and joyous. With respect to the ideas of the heroic world, if, 
on the one hand, the Homeric heroes speak of the gods having given 
them evils, and having ordained such things wishing them evil; on the 
other, the hero of Sophocles, Polynices, recognizes in his misfortunes 
the hand of an avenging deity;+ and Archidamus, the Spartan king, 
proclaims adversity to be the school of virtue. «Let us not suppose,”’ 
said he, “that there is any great difference between one man and 
another ; but that he is the best who has been brought up in the greatest 
necessities.”’+ 

Finally, let those who object to the Catholic view of suffering and 
penance, hear the remarkable words of Plato, explaining in what man- 
ner it may be often for the eternal advantage of men to choose mortifi- 
cation. ‘A person,”’ saith he, ‘acting unjustly and escaping punish- 
ment and all suffering on account of his injustice, and congratulating 
himself upon such exemption, would be more miserable and deluded 
than a sick person who should rejoice in not undergoing the operation 
which alone could effect the cure of his body. In fine, the not receiv- 
ing punishment for evil is the first and greatest of all calamities ; so that 
if rhetoric be of any use to one who is unjust, it can only be by ena- 
bling him to expose fully and manfully his own injustice, in order that 
it may receive the proper punishment, whether of chains, or banish- 
ment, or death; that so his soul may be healed in the same manner as 
he would offer his limb to the knife or fire of the surgeon, in order to 
have it restored to soundness. Therefore each person should be his 
own accuser, and should beware of concealing his wickedness, and 
should employ all his rhetoric to this end, that he may be loosed from 
the greatest evil of injustice.”’|| 

But to return to the phenomena presented in the Christian life, we 
have observed, that in the restored and sanctified nature, during ages of 
faith, was discernible, not only this natural mourning from a sense of the 
sufferings of humanity ; but also a mourning which may be termed of 
wisdom, as if belonging, of necessity, to all peculiar depth and penetra- 
tion of mind. St. Thomas says, that the third beautitude, or that of 
tears, answers to the gift of science; implying, that wisdom and philo- 


Seesaw ne i a neni NO de ee 


* Ethic. Nic. i. 10. + Gd. Col. 1299, + Thucydid. lib. i. ¢. 84. 
| Plato Gorgias. 


AGES OF FAITH, 175 


sophy prepare us for sorrow. ‘ The gift of science,” says St. Augus- 
tin, ‘brings the third beatitude, beati qui lugent; for it enables men to 
learn the evils to which they are bound.’’* 

Many philosophers have remarked with Rhasis, that the finest wits 
and most generous spirits are before others obnoxious to melancholy ; 
‘‘qui sunt subtilis ingenii et multe perspicacitatis de facile incidunt in 
melancholiam ;”’ and one ancient author affirms that melancholy advan- 
ceth men’s conceits more than any humour whatsoever. 

The love of wisdom, indeed, is said in the unerring text, to dispel 
sadness like wine and music;t but yet we read in the same, that the 
heart of the wise is where is sadness. In fact, as St. Anselm remarks, 
‘¢quamvis delectabiles et dulces sint sapientia et dilectio, tamen in hujus 
vite lubrico generant dolorem et amaritudinem aliquando: que quanto 
veriores et majores sunt, tanto hoe faciunt rarius, et tanto gravius.’’t 
Albert Durer’s celebrated design representing melancholy personified, 
shows a woman surrounded with the instruments of science, and occu- 
pied with its problems. Such was that sage of whom the poet says, 


———— *‘ His aspirations 

Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth, 
And they have only taught him what we know, 
That knowledge is not happiness, and science 
But an exchange of ignorance for that 

Which is another kind of ignorance.” | 


Yet, to the discerning and attentive eye, nature herself seemed to indi- 
cate mourning in characters that the wise could read. In some flowers, 
like that of the bean, Varro says, lugubrious letters are visible, and some 
suppose that it was on account of them the bean was forbidden food to 
the Pythagoreans. ‘* Whither goest thou, grief?’ say the Spaniards, 
‘¢where I am wont;’’ and again they say, ‘*when born I wept, and 
every day shows why.”’ 

‘‘In the nations of the south,” says Don Savedra, who could judge 
from long observation, ‘‘the men are melancholy and profound in pene- 
trating the secrets of nature.”’§ But so itis with man; and his noble 
nature, undaunted by the prospect of sorrow, impels him no less to con- 
template; and as the poet says, ‘‘ while the same honour ceases to 
belong to the flowers of the spring, and the moon shines not with one 
unchanging countenance, he fatigues his lesser mind with eternal coun- 
sels.”’** Hence, the rapid course of life afflicts the wise man more than 
others, ** for who knows most, him loss of time most grieves.’’ In the 
middle ages, the term sad was generally applied to every one who made 
profession of learning ; for it was remembered then by all, that wisdom 
is not found in the land of those who live a sweet life.tt Without any 
indication of a troubled mind, a student might expect to have been often 
designated as was Hamlet by his mother: ‘ But look, where sadly the 
poor wretch comes reading.’” Painters would represent him making of 
one hand for his cheek a couch, with frequent sighs. Reading in the 
middle ages was not pursued as a light desultory amusement; it was the 
food of those thoughts that wander through eternity. 


* De Serm. Dom. in monte. + Eccles. xl. 20. {S. Anselmi, Epist. lib. xi. 50. 
} Manfred, ii, | § Christian Prince, ii. 380. | ** Hor. Carm. lib, ii. 11. Tt Job. 


176 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


A French writer of great eminence has made the remark, that when 
nature bestows sublimity of genius, she accompanies it with that condi- 
tion, ‘¢ Be a great but an unhappy man.” Religion herself held out no 
other prospect. ‘‘ False prophets,”’ says St. Jerome, ‘“ always promise 
sweet things, and please for a time. Truth is bitter, and they who 
preach it are filled with bitterness. In the unleavened bread of sincerity 
and truth, the Pasch of the Lord is celebrated, and it is eaten with bit- 
terness.””* Hence the shallow and ignoble sentence that ‘it is better 
sometimes to rejoice in error than always to grieve on account of 
truth.” ‘There was observable also, it has been said, the mourning of 
love; which, as St. Anselm says, “like wisdom not unfrequently gen- 
erates in the present life bitterness and sorrow.’’ Plato said, that love 
and melancholy are near relations.t If one might venture to illustrate 
this theme, renewing the memory or custom of love-tuned song, I know 
indeed that full many piteous stories do remain from the period of these 
extraordinary ages when every aspiration of the human heart was often 
sanctified and pure. But it would be long and out of place to speak of 
those who, like Tancredie, had no other fault but love; which, by unad- 
vised sight, had been 


“ Bred in the dangers of adventurous arms, 
And nurs’d with griefs, with sorrows, woes, and harms.’’ 


Since, of such love, it is not fitting here to speak, let us turn to a more 
fruitful source of mourning during the ages of faith, which will enable 
us to penetrate far deeper than we have hitherto done into their spirit 
and genius; for as yet we have but merely touched, as it were, upon 
the surface, and seen nought but what the history of men at all times 
might be found to supply. 


CHAPTER III. 


‘‘O THov Almighty Father! as angels of their will tender unto thee 
meet sacrifice, circling thy throne with loud hosannas; so may the offer- 
ing of theirs be duly made to thee by saintly men on earth;’’ such was 
the prayer that rose incessantly to heaven wherever the catholic church 
had children, and these few words are sufficient to show with what 
spirit and conduct they regarded and received sorrow. The mourning 
of piety is a new and abundant theme, which to philosophers them- 
selves, might be presented as one full of interest, and abounding in 
matter for observation and profound thought. Faith taught men the 
necessity for mourning, as a means of spiritual purification and of ascent 
to God. To the eye of faith the state of mourning was therefore a privi- 
RS ask: Oe i OL ee ee 

* Advers. Jovin. lib. ii. t De Repub. lib. ix. 


AGES OF FAITH. 177 


leged and blessed state; and hence the priest, when about to celebrate 
the sacred mysieries, on taking the manipule uses this prayer: ‘* Merear, 
Domine, portare manipulum fletus et doloris, ut cum exultatione reci- 
pliam mercedem laboris.”’ 

All writers of the spiritual life have shown, that those who are to be 
united to God must suffer many afflictions, internal as well as external, 
spiritual as well as sensible, in order that both parts may be perfectly 
purified; for, without such suffering and crosses, there cannot be the 
complete union and joy of the blessed.* ‘+ 'The perfect,”’ says St. John 
of the Cross, ‘‘ have to pass through the night of the senses, the night 
of the spirit, the night of the memory, and the night of the will, which 
four nights represent the four kinds of mortification which they must 
endure. Because they are accepted of God—temptation must prove 
them.’’ How wondrously conformable to the dictates of Divine wisdom 
was that maxim of Pythagoras,t where he said that ‘‘ conquerors and 
those on whom leaves are thrown are polluted.’’ Hence, no doubt the 
phenomenon which has so often elicited the remark which is found in 
even the ancient poet, that «the wicked are sometimes more fortunate 
than the good.’ What examples were beheld in the calamities which 
befell St. ‘Lonuia, René of Anjou, Count Elzear de Sabran, St. Elizabeth, 
Henry VI. of England, many of the popes and other saintly personages 
during the middle ages. ‘Those arms of the Braschi family, Boreas 
blowing on the rose, so symbolical of the life of the holy Pope Pius 
VI., might be adopted as a general emblem of the lot of goodness in 
this perverse world. ‘The history of St. Francis Xavier furnishes a 
memorable instance. The king of Japan, who was converted by the 
preaching of the saint, had enjoyed the utmost prosperity while an idol- 
ater. No sooner did he renounce idolatry, and embrace the Christian 
faith, than it pleased God to visit him with all kinds of calamities. 
Two months after his baptism, his subjects rose against him and drove 
him from his throne. When the Gentiles reproached him with having 
changed his religion, and said that this was the cause of his misfortunes, 
he made a vow at the foot of the altar to live and die a Christian; add- 
ing, ‘‘that if all Japan and all Europe, if the fathers of the society and 
the Pope himself were to renounce Jesus Christ, that he would confess 
him to the last hour of his life; and that he would be always ready to 
shed his blood in testimony to his faith.””|| 

Still more remarkable is the answer which St. Theresa made to a 
devout merchant from whom she had received an alms, and the events 
which followed in that man’s life. ‘*I have recommended you in my 
prayers as you desired,” said she to him, ‘‘ and it has been revealed to 
me, that your name is written in the book of life, and as a sign of the 
truth of what [ say, you will never prosper again in your worldly affairs.” 
So it turned out: his ships were successively wrecked and sunk; be- 
coming unable to pay his debts, he was delivered from prison “only 
through the esteem which his creditors entertained for his piety ; and 
being thus stript of all worldly goods, but contented with the grace of 


* St. John of the Cross. The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the obscure night of the 
soul. + Porphyrius de Vita Pythagore, xxxi. 

+ Eurip. Helen. 1218. || Bouhours, Vie de St. F. Xavier, ii. 230. 

Vou. I.—23 


178 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


God alone, he closed his days in the odour of sanctity ; thus disproving 
too the testimony of the Greek poet when he said, that «the soul of the 
man who was once prosperous, when he falls into calamity, wanders 
over the past pleasures.”* To facts of this kind, however, the holy 
fathers allude in words that denote how easy it was for men to misun- 
derstand the phenomena. ‘The winds,” say they, ‘rise upon this 
ocean; you behold the evil prospering and the good in distress. There 
is a temptation, there is a flood, and your soul saith, ‘O God, God, is 
this thy justice, that the wicked should prosper and that the good should 
be in distress ?” and God will reply to you, «Is this your faith? Is 
this what I promised to you, or is it for this that you are a Christian, 
that you should prosper in this world?’ ” 

‘Be not astonished,” says Louis of Blois, «*and murmur not against 
God. Refer to the scriptures; there you will see how the devil was 
heard and the apostle not heard! In what manner were the demons 
heard? They sought leave to enter the swine, and leave was granted 
to them. The devil sought leave to tempt Job, and he received it. In 
what manner was the apostle not heard? ‘Thrice he besought the Lord 
that the cause of his suffering might be taken from him; and his answer 
was, ‘Sufficit tibi gratia mea, nam virtus in infirmitate perficitur.’ He 
heard him whom he intended to condemn, and he heard not him whom 
he wished to save.’’t 

As far as respects external calamities, reason itself can discern their 
utility. Heaven has many ways of conferring happiness, and adversity 
is one of them. This, no doubt, Pindar saw when he sung, 

Tloaaat 3” od ot 
Luv Jecte evrenyias.¢ 


‘Tt is in the nature of things,’’ says De Haller, «‘ and all history at- 
tests it, that a too long enjoyment of the highest fortune contains in itself 
the seeds of destruction, that by the softness, the luxury, and the indiffer- 
ence which are its usual results, it ends in enervating the most vigorous 
races, and in extinguishing that force of soul, along with which all other 
goods of the earth are lost.”” If this was often true in reference even to 
the interests of the present life, much more frequently was it so with 
regard to the more important concern of the soul’s health and condition 
for eternity. The deep sense which men entertained of this fact during 
the ages of faith, has given rise to a tone in their whole literature, which 
has often struck the modern readers, who are constrained to admire the 
imperturbable resignation with which the most unforeseen and dreadful 
calamities were endured. The page of history is often suddenly illu- 
minated with bright examples of this kind, which seldom fail to charm 
even the most insensible: and certainly the contrast which is presented 
in this respect by our annals to the whole of heathen literature, must 
excite a surprise not unmixed with the highest pleasure. The ancient 
poets seem never to have conceived the idea of a spirit of resignation 
and sacrifice, which would soften and sanctify calamity. Hecuba be- 
comes impious in her misfortune, and says, that to call upon the gods is 
to invoke evil allies, though it may have a certain form of propriety to 


* Burip. Troades, 640. + Ludovic. Blosii Tractat. in Ps. lxxxv. + Olymp. viii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 179 


appeal to them in misfortune.* In the poet’s mind it was impossible 
that any feeling but that of the utmost horror could be excited in the 
breast of one who, having been the mother of Hector, might now in her 
misfortunes and subjection, be doomed to guard the keys of the gate, or 
to prepare food.t It is easy to see what an advantage the poet of the 
middle ages would have had here in following the common inspiration 
of religion. In fact, there is nothing more remarkable in their whole 
history and literature, than the astonishing change which Christianity 
had wrought in the hearts and understanding of men with regard to the 
contemplation or experience of misfortune. ‘ When Fouquet’s mother 
heard of the arrest of her son, she threw herself on her knees,”’ says the 
Abbé de Choisy, ‘and raised up her hands to heaven. ‘1 thank you, 
O my God,’ she cried, ‘I have always prayed to you for his salvation, 
and lo, here is the way opened!’ Catharine, queen of England, used 
to say, that she would rather have adverse than prosperous fortune, for 
that the former never wanted consolation; whereas, in the latter, both 
mind and judgment were often wanting. 

When the venerable Mother de Chantal came to Moulins, she had 
much conversation with the Duchess de Montmorency, who was there 
residing in the convent of the Visitation. The holy woman expressed her 
joy that the duchess should have made such good use of her misfortunes. 
‘© My misfortunes,” replied Madame de Montmorency, ** have not been 
the sole cause of my retreat: I have always felt an indifference for the 
world, even when I was at the court. My misfortunes found me in this 
disposition, and I have received them as means granted by God, to ena- 
ble me to fulfil the wish of my early youth, to live in retreat, unknown, 
and without other care, but that of my salvation. I have endeavoured 
to place myself in this state, and I have lived now for many years as 
you see me in this house, hoping that Heaven will have pity upon me.’’t 

The chief of modern bards who, in tales of prose, without a rival 
stands, has chosen for matter of his song, the wisdom and peace of a 
blessed mourner contrasted with the sadness of one who judged with the 
world’s mind, where he describes the meeting of Bruce and his royal 
sister, the Abbess Isabel, in her Convent of St. Bride: 

«The Bruce survey’d the humble cell, 
And this is thine, poor Isabel! 
That pallet-couch, and naked wall, 
For room of state, and bed of pall; 
For costly robes and jewels rare, 
A string of beads and zone of hair; 
And for the trumpet’s sprightly call 
T’o sport or banquet, grove or hall, 


The bell’s grim voice divides thy care, 
’T'wixt hours of penitence and prayer ! 


The noble abbess consoles him respecting his past misfortunes, adding, 


‘“< And grieve not that on Pleasure’s stream, 
No more I drive in giddy dream, 
For Heaven the erring pilot knew, 
And from the gulf the vessel drew. 
Tried me with judgments, stern and great, 
My house’s ruin, thy defeat, 


era ETE eT a ee ee St GPE SR SR > a 


* Eurip. Troades, 473. Ibid. 494. { Marsollier, Vie de Mde. Chantal, ii. 1810. 


180 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


Poor Nigel’s death; till, tamed, I own 
My hopes are fix’d on heaven alone ; 
Nor e’er shall earthly prospects win 
My heart to this vain world of sin.” 


Finally, she sends her reply to Lord Ronald, who knew not of her 
having taken the veil— 

“This answer be to Ronald given: 
The heart he asks is fix’d on heaven. 
My love was like a summer-flower, 
That wither’d in the wintry hour; 
Born but of vanity and pride, 
And with these sunny visions died. 
Brother, for little space, farewell! 
To other duties warns the bell.” 


‘Then follows the lament cf the worldly heart— 


“ Lost to the world, King Robert said, 
When he had left the royal maid— 
Lost to the world, by lot severe— 
Oh! what a gem lies buried here; 
Nipp’d by misfortune’s cruel frost, 
The buds of fair affection lost,?* 


Would you observe the same resignation in the mourning of heroes ? 
When the master of Santiago beheld his forces overwhelmed by the 
Moors on the mountains of Malaga, his cry was, «*«O, Lord of Hosts! 
from thy wrath do I fly, not from these infidels; they are but instru- 
ments in thy hands, to chastise us for our sins!” « This defeat,” says 
one of the devout historians of Spain, ‘‘ was to teach them, that the race 
is not to the swift, nor the battle to the Strong, but that God alone giveth 
the victory ;”’ and Father Antonio Agapida asserts it to be a punishment 
for the avarice of the Spanish warriors, who were intent upon spoil. 
It is the same spirit in the Saxon Chronicle, where it describes the 
dreadful pestilence and famine which desolated England in the year 
1087, concluding with this reflection, « Alas! how wretched and how 
rueful a time was there! Who isso hard-hearted as not to weep at such 
misfortunes? Yet such things happen for men’s sins—they will not 
love God and justice.”” While recording the temper and views with 
which sufferings were borne by St. Louis, by Alfred, and by many 
other heroic and saintly kings of the middle ages, history is constrained 
to assume a tone of sanctity which is Strangely at variance with its gene- 
rally profane character. Sometimes the details are very attractive: as 
those relating to that affecting scene which was presented at the Coun- 
cil of Rheims, in which Pope Innocent presided, and before which St. 
Bernard preached. Philip, the eldest son of King Louis-le-Gros, had 
lately met with a tragic death by an accident; and the King was now 
proceeding to Rheims to have his second son crowned, but the loss 
of the former had overwhelmed him with affliction. ‘The King, Queen 
and young Prince, attended by the Abbot Suger, and by the whole 
court, arrived in that city on the 23d of October. The next day the 
King came to the council, followed by a crowd of nobles, and leaning on 
the shoulder of Raoul, Count de Vermandois, Grand Senéchal of France, 


Re hail oe 


* Lord of the Isles, iv, 


AGES OF FAITH. 181 


like a man oppressed with sadness; he mounted into the Pope’s tribune, 
and after kissing his feet, sat down in a chair, which was a little lower 
than that of his Holiness. He spoke of the death of his son in few 
words, which drew tears from the eyes of all present; at every word he 
spake his tears flowed fast, and all the bitterness of his heart appeared 
in his countenance. ‘The Pope replied before the council— Great 
King, you must raise your mind and all your thoughts to the King of 
kings, to adore his judgments, and receive with perfect submission the 
events of his Divine Providence. It is he who has placed the crown 
of France upon your head; it is by his will that you command this noble 
and generous nation; but he requires you to believe that every thing 
occurs by his permission, for it is not a blind divinity which can be 
ignorant of any thing that passes here below ; and though there are often 
great injustices, these events are always just on his part, and the effects 
either of his justice or of his mercy. You know, great Prince, that 
prosperity and adversity are the ordinary means which he employs 
in conducting his children; and this alternative, which he sheds on the 
whole course of our life, is an effect of his highest wisdom, in order that 
man may not attach himself to the figure of this world which passes 
away, lest, if he were always prosperous, he might forget that this is a 
place of exile, and that all our vows and desires should tend to the celes- 
tial Jerusalem. We have no secure dwelling in this world: we are only 
like travellers, who pass on, and who proceed to their country, which 
is Heaven. . Then, all who have lived according to the spirit, and who 
have mortified their passions, will reign with God, in the possession of 
eternal happiness. Your son has been taken, while he was yet in sim- 
plicity and innocence; and the kingdom of heaven is particularly des- 
tined for those whom the corruption of the world hath not infected. 
Consider how David ceased to mourn as soon.as his son was dead, and 
how he wisely submitted to the ordinance of Heaven. I conjure you, 
then, to moderate this excessive grief, and to banish this overwhelming 
sadness, which appears on your countenance, and which arises only 
from an affliction which is a little too human. Remember that Heaven 
has left you other sons. It is for you to console us strangers, driven 
from our country, and become, as it were, wanderers from land to land. 
You have already done so, in a manner worthy of your piety. You are 
the first of the Christian Princes to whom we are indebted for hospital- 
ity. May Heaven recompense you as you deserve, and crown you with 
an everlasting happiness, and a happy life, which will be no more sub- 
ject to death, and a holy joy, which no sorrow shall ever more disturb.” 
With these words the Pope arose, and absolved the soul of the deceased 
Prince ; and then the council was adjourned till the next day. The 
King appeared consoled. ‘The discourse of the Holy Father had made 
an impression on his understanding and on his heart. He retired, in 
great peace, to the Abbey of St. Remy, where he had taken up his 
lodging. 

The sages of the cloister kept men mindful of the end for which all 
human felicity is chequered with sorrow. I remember once, while 
spending some days in a certain monastery, where I was received with 
wondrous benignity, that one venerable Father, of great age, used to 
come to my chamber every evening, when he would converse with me 


182 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


for a short time. <‘‘ Our sovereign,”’ he said to me one night, «« who is 
beloved by all his subjects as a pious, just, and amiable prince, has no 
son. Ah! see how the condition of man, in his best estate, has always 
some dark side, in order to remind him that his true country is not in 
this world. Again, with respect to ourselves, what a happy land is our 
beloved country—what an industrious innocent people! During thirty- 
seven years that I have lived in this forest, no deed of violence has ever 
been committed. What a combination of blessings do we enjoy? A 
wise, humane government; no national debt; no want of freedom; a de- 
licious climate; a fertile soil! Such is our state to-day; but when our 
sovereign dies,—dies without an heir,—what is to be our fate? This 
only we know for certain, that bliss may not remain long with mortals,— 
that here we have no abiding home, that here is nothing secure—nothing 
durable.”? To cite instances of misfortune having been the means of con- 
ferring great spiritual good, would be an unnecessary task ; but yet there 
is one example in the history of France so remarkable, so associated with 
themes that should be dear and precious, that I cannot pass on without 
first attending to it. Pélisson, confined in a dungeon in the Bastile, ap- 
plied himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, and 
became convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion. He and La Fon- 
taine, who was wholly depending upon patronage, were the two young 
men who came forward to defend Fouquet, the moment he was thrown 
into prison and proscribed, when all his creatures and all the courtiers 
abandoned him. Pélisson, from the Bastile, sent forth Discourses in his 
favour, which have been compared with those of Cicero: he left nothing 
untried to help his friend—«‘le premier entre les généreux.” Poetry, 
eloquence, glory, religion, even menaces, were employed to move the 
king. Perhaps, if it were lawful to indulge in such speculations, it was 
for this noble virtue, that Pélisson was rewarded by conversion, and La 
Fontaine by the gift of repentance. The former, from this happy mo- 
ment, abandoned his former trivial compositions, and wrote no more, 
except for God and his Church. As he had neither paper, pens, nor 
ink, he used to cut off little pieces of the lead casement with which he 
used to write down his thoughts. While in prison, many learned per- 
sons dedicated their works to him. Nothing could disturb the tran- 
quillity of his soul, for mourning had enabled him to view every object 
from the height of faith. One of his Odes was written during a great 
storm, in the Bastile:—<‘ Rude and terrible blast, thou only assaultest 
my prison ; while on the sea, how much greater cause of fear! Celestial 
faith, whose ardour elevates and inflames me; thou teachest me that this 
weak body is nothing but the dwelling of my soul. Others may well 
fear a cruel shipwreck. Rude and terrible blast, thou only assaultest 
my prison.” Another Ode is addressed to the sun:—*‘‘I behold thee, 
O Sun! advancing with royal splendour; but another object, greater than 
thee, occupies all my thoughts: I feel it; it is in my heart; before it, 
thy splendid beams grow pale, and thy light resembles a shadow. By 
it I live; by it thou runnest thy course, and bringest night and day. 
Depart, O Sun! whither thou art summoned; I have no regard, no dis- 
course, excepting for its immortal light.’ Again:—‘ Rise, my soul, 
above the earth, and above the pride of profane mortals. Contemplate 
the saints, whose long fervour, imitating the labour of the heavenly 


AGES OF FAITH. 183 


Saviour, sustains their spirit of celestial hopes.”” Again ;—‘** The exam- 
ple of Godeau has inspired me with the desire of consecrating my genius 
and my voice to God. I behold a thousand learned men, whose verses 
have power to reign over kings, and to give to their names a deathless 
renown. Mortals, who possess this precious gift, too long have ye 
flattered the princes of the earth; begin at length to praise the Monarch 
of Heaven.” Again:—‘‘ Sweet nightingales, who return every year to 
sing in these groves, consecrate your charming voices to the glory of 
God, who has endowed you with them. Bright flowers of the fresh 
season! do not present yourselves to my sight—you render the earth 
too lovely : I wish to love only heaven.”’ Again :-—* Double bars, with 
bolts unnumbered—triple gates, strongly locked, to souls truly wicked, 
you represent hell!—but to innocent souls, you are only wood, stone, 
and iron.” Upon his deliverance from the Bastile, after some delay, in 
consequence of hearing of the intended promotion which awaited him, 
he, at length, embraced the Catholic religion, in the subterraneous 
church of Chartres, in the year 1670. The same day, he wrote an 
affecting letter to the King; and on the following, retired to the Abbey 
of La Trappe, and remained there during ten days, leading the life of a 
holy anchorite: his piety affected every beholder. Ever afterwards, he 
was in habits of hearing mass daily,—of receiving the communion on all 
festivals,—of making frequent retreats,—of delivering some prisoners 
every year: he was the father of orphans, and the protector of the weak : 
he made considerable presents to several churches, chiefly to mark his 
veneration for the mystery of the eucharist. Amongst others, he gave a 
silver lamp, weighing two thousand pounds, to the Sisters of the Visita- 
tion, to burn night and day before the blessed sacrament. «¢ Happy 
captivity !’’ cried Fenelon, alluding to him in the discourse which he 
pronounced on entering the French Academy, ‘‘ Happy captivity ! salu- 
tary bonds! which reduced, under the yoke of faith, this mind, too long 
independent. During this period of leisure, he sought in tradition for 
arms to combat truth; but truth conquered him, and revealed itself to 
his soul, with all its charms. He left his prison, honoured with the 
esteem and graces of his King; but, what is much more, he left it, being 
already in his heart, a humble child of the Church.’”* 

Of the necessity for mourning in the spiritual life, men were well 
convinced in the ages of faith; but its source was far deeper and more 
mysterious than the mere present utility which resulted from it to the 
soul. ‘Augustin and Jerome belong to these latter ages of the world,”’ 
says a philosopher, in casting a glance over the history of the human 
mind. ‘One discovers in them an order of ideas, and a manner of 
thinking, unknown to antiquity. Christianity has made a cord to vibrate 
in their hearts which till then had been mute. It has created men of 
revery, of sadness, of disgust, of restlessness, who have no refuge but 
in eternity.’’—** The present life is sweet, and full of much pleasure ; 


* He wrote “ Réflexions sur les Différends de la Religion,” which Leibnitz pronounced 
an admirable work ; also, “ Traité de ’ Eucharistie,” in which Bossuet said, ** That char- 
ity was joined to truth, and that unction was added to light: it contained prayers, which 
he had composed for use during mass; which are so fine, that Father Judde can find 
none more suitable to insert in his book of instructions.” Tom. iii. 330. 


184 MORES CATHOLICI; oR, 


yet not to all men, but to those only who are attached to it.” It js St. 
Chrysostom who speaks thus:—< For if any one were to look up to 
heaven, and contemplate what wondrous things are there, immediately 
he would despise this world, and esteem it of no value. ‘The beauty 
of bodies, so long as no greater beauty is discerned, excites admiration ; 
but if any thing more excellent were to appear, the former would be 
despised. And if we should wish to behold that beauty, and to consider 
the form of the celestial kingdom, we should thenceforth be loosed from 
the bonds of this world.”* «0 quam sordet terra,” cries @ great saint, 
‘quando celum aspicio!”’ And so says St. Augustin, after conversing 
with his mother, Monica, at Ostia, on the beatitude of the saints in 
Heaven, «* Mundus iste nobis viluerat cum omnibus delectationibus 
suis.”"—“ The bonds of this world,’’ he Says, in another place, ‘‘ have 
a true asperity and a false sweetness, a sure grief, an uncertain pleasure, 
hard labour, timid rest, things full of misery, and a hope void of happi- 
ness.”’+ ‘Thus, «+ Not alone the creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, 
but also they who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan within them- 
selves, expecting the adoption of the sons of God 3’ t «He who does 
not mourn as a stranger,” says St. Augustin, « will never rejoice as a 
citizen.’’|_ The holy Church, in her prayer to God, says, that his peo- 
ple labour under continual tribulations.§ Let us proceed to inquire 
what were these tribulations which faith recognized as the legitimate 
source of a mourning that is blessed. In the first place, then, we are 
told, by writers of the middle ages, that when the soul is awakened to 
a sense of spiritual things, the mere contemplation of its fallen state is 
a worthy cause for sorrow and for profound mourning. Hear the words 
of St. Vincentius, in his celebrated tract on the contemplation of. God : 
—O Lord! thou art my God and my Lord; and I have never seen 
thee. Thou hast made and restored ime, and all that I possess of good, 
thou hast granted to me, and I have not yet known thee. For seeing 
thee I was created, and I have not fulfilled that for which I was created. 
O, miserable lot of man, when he lost that for which he was created ! 
O, hard and dire calamity! Alas! what lost he, and what found he? 
What departed, and what remained? He lost beatitude, for which he 
was made; and he found misery, for which he was not made. That 
departed, without which nothing is happy ; and that remained, which, 
of itself, is only wretchedness. Man used to eat the bread of angels, 
for which he now hungers ; and now he eats the bread of sorrow, of 
which he once knew nothing. Alas! the common grief of men, the 
universal woe of the children of Adam! driven from their sweet coun- 
try, from the pleasant light, from the vision of God, from the bliss of 
immortality into darkness, and the bitterness and horror of death, 
amerced of heaven, and from eternal splendours flung.”** Hear, again, 
how St. Bernard speaks, in his first Sermon on the Epiphany :— The 
benignity and humanity of God our Saviour hath appeared, thanks be 
to God, by whom thus abounds our consolation in this pilgrimage, in 
this exile, in this misery. For this end we are the more careful often 
to admonish you that you may never forget how you are pilgrims, far 


* Hom. ce. in Joan. Tt Epist. 30. + Rom. viii. | Tract. in Ps. 148. 
§ 3d feria, Fourth Week in Lent. ** Tract. S. Vincentii ad contempl. Deum. 


AGES OF FAITH. 185 


removed from your country, driven from your inheritance; for, whoever 
does not know desolation, cannot acknowledge comfort; whoever is 
ignorant that consolation is necessary, it remains that he be left without 
the grace of God. Hence it is that men, who are engaged in the occu- 
pations and crimes of the world, while they do not perceive their mis- 
ery, do not look for merey. But you, to whom it hath not been said in 
vain, ‘ Be still, and see how sweet is the Lord;’ and of whom the same 
Prophet says, ‘ He will announce the virtue of his works to his people,’ 
—you, I say, whom secular affairs do not detain, are able to know what 
is spiritual consolation: ‘ Hearken! you who have known exile, because 
assistance is come from Heaven: for the benignity and humanity of 
God our Saviour hath appeared.’ ’’—** There is a certain kind of tribu- 
lation,” says Louis of Blois, ‘which we ought to seek and find ; that 
which results from remembering that we are not as yet with God, that 
we are surrounded with temptations, that we cannot be without fear. 
He who does not experience this tribulation of his pilgrimage, thinks 
not about returning to his country.”’* «The weight of sin,” says a 
holy friar of the Seraphic Order of St. Francis, ‘is only felt when it 
is out of its centre. Water and earth are heavy; and yet, when they 
are in their proper place, they are both without weight. ‘Thus it is with 
sinners. ‘They are as joyous as if they had never done any thing but 
served God, and led a life of innocence. The reason is, that sin repo- 
ses in them as in its proper element; but let them forsake it, and then 
they will soon discover that its weight is intolerable.”+ Reason itself 
can discern this, as may be seen with Seneca, who puts this difference 
between the sickness of the body and that of the mind; that with 
respect to sickness of body, the greater it is the more painful ; but in 
diseases of the mind, the greater they are, the less they are felt and 
complained of.{ Then, indeed, deceitful is the calm, so deceitful the 
silence, that even 2 heathen philosopher says, that the guardian angels 
speak not to all souls; for when men struggle in the waves of the sea, 
those on the shore behold in silence as many as are at a distance from 
the land irremediably lost, but run and succour, with their hands and 
with their cries, as many as are approaching the land; so these minis- 
tering spirits suffer in silence such as are sinking afar off in the flood of 
wickedness, but sustain and guide to a happy port those who are strug- 
eling to practise virtue—That the first recovery from sin is attended 
by a sense of sorrow, is shown by St. Bernard, in language of wondrous 
sublimity :—‘‘ Lazarus is dead four days, and now stinketh. This 
answereth,” he continues, “to the state of sinners. The first day is 
that in which we die by sin, and are, as it were, buried in our con- 
sciences; the second represents that temptation of evil habits, and those 
fiery darts of the devil, which can scarcely be extinguished ; the third 
is, while we meditate on our past years, in bitterness of heart, and yet 
labour not so much to avoid future sins, as we deplore what we have 
already committed. ‘These are days of burial, days of clouds and dark- 
ness, days of sorrow and bitterness. Next follows the day of shame, 
not unlike the other three, when the wretched soul is covered with hor- 
rible confusion, while it considers what it hath lost, and revolves black 


ee eS Se i 5 ee 


* Tractat. in Ps. 49. + Le Sacré Mont d’Olivet. 136. t In Sentent. 


186 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


images of sins before the eyes of its heart. In this State the soul dis- 
sembles nothing, but judges and aggravates all things, spares not itself, 
but is its own stern judge. Nevertheless, Lazarus, come forth ! Delay 
no longer in this abomination, in this despair, which is like putrefac- 
tion; Lazarus, come forth! abyss calls upon abyss. The abyss of 
light and mercy upon the abyss of misery and darkness. Lazarus, 
come forth !”* In no stage of the spiritual life was the mourning conse- 
quent upon the sense of sin excluded. Thus, Paschasius Radbert men- 
tions the soliloquy of his friend, the holy abbot Wala, who said, on 
one occasion, ‘¢ Why does he appear so sorrowful, as he walks alone ? 
Because he is with himself, and he discerns what is within himself; 
and therefore he has no joy excepting what springs from hope.’’f 

The infant new born is not exempt from sin. * Hence,”? says Ori- 
gen, “we find, in the sacred history, no personage of distinguished 
sanctity, who regarded the day of his birth as a day of festival and 
rejoicing.”’*t It was to complete the triumph of a birth-day feast, that 
the holy John the Baptist was martyred.|| Birth-days were not cele- 
brated in the middle ages, but men rejoiced on the festival of their 
respective patrons. The Church guided them in this judgment, for she 
did not rejoice on the day of man’s creation, which is the sixth. It 
soon became unhappy; ‘But admire the mystery,’’ adds Bossuet: 
‘*the day when the first man, Adam, was created, is the same as that 
on which the new man, the new Adam, died upon the cross. It is, 
therefore, for the Church, a day of fasting and of mourning—a day 
which is followed by the sad repose of Jesus Christ in the sepulchre, 
and which, nevertheless, is full of consolation, by hope of a future res- 
urrection.”? The Church does not even celebrate the nativity of the 
saints. ‘What is this, brethren?” asks St. Augustin, alluding to St. 
Cyprian. ‘We know not when this saint was born, and yet we cele- 
brate his birth on this day, which was the day of his passion. But 
even if we did know the day of his birth, we would not celebrate it, for 
on that day he was born in sin.” These sentiments were universally 
adopted during the ages of faith. «The day of birth,’? says Michael 
Angelo, in a letter to Vasari, ‘fought not to be celebrated with festi- 
vals; they should be kept for the death of the man who has lived vir- 
tuously.”’ 

Protestantism was a soil in which every weed or plant of the ancient 
heathen life was able to revive and strike root, precisely because the 
supernatural influence of faith was withdrawn, and the observance of 
birth-days in the ancient style, on the anniversary of which men would 
render honours to Bacchus, like the Pagans,§ furnishes a remarkable 
example. Sometimes they would celebrate their birth-day as a reli- 
gious festival. Heriot, who founded a hospital at Edinburgh, in the 
Statutes of his foundation ordered his birth-day to be kept solemnly, and 
himself to be on that day commemorated in his chapel; and the minis- 
ter who officiated was to receive five pounds and a bible, which day the 
Presbyterians continued to celebrate, though they had abolished Christ’s 


EE ee it reel, emi en aliiy ibe age eames 


* In Asstimptione B. Marie, Serm. iv. 
{ Vita ejus apud Mabill. Acta S. Ordinis Benedict. Secul. iv., pars. i. ; 
t Hom. Levit. viii. 3. | Matt. xiv. 6. § Eurip. Io. 1137. 


AGES OF FAITH, 187 


birth-day, and the festivals of God’s saints. With the moderns, the 
associations of the natural were stronger than those of the supernatural 
life, or rather, the latter were entirely abandoned: and here we shall do 
well to remark the difference in regard to real cheerfulness between the 
festivities of the middle ages, and those of our times: the former were 
designed to commemorate a glorious and happy triumph, in which no 
image was seen but what had connection with life, and everlasting glad- 
ness; the latter to please men whose hopes extend not beyond the pres- 
ent life, where they place all their happiness, have for subject of rejoic- 
ing, an event which is fraught with the gloomy idea of change, of depar- 
ted youth, and of by-gone years, and of death approaching with rapid 
step, beyond which this pompous festivity of nature has nothing to 
promise. So true is it, that even the rejoicings of the world are full of 
its sadness and bitterness. But it was not only a sense of their own 
condition that could inspire men of spiritual life with mourning; a regard 
for the eternal lot of other men, and of humanity in general, would have 
conduced to itno less. ‘+ Consider the multitude and the greatness of the 
miseries which oppress children,” says St. Augustin, ‘‘and how the 
first years of their life are full of vanity and suffering, illusions, and fear. 
Then when they grow up, and begin to serve God, error tempts them 
to their seduction; labour and sorrow tempt to other discouragement ; 
concupiscence tempts them to inflame their passions ; pride tempts them 
to exalt themselves; and who can find words to represent the various 
pains which belong to the yoke of the children of Adam ;’’* hence 
another source of mourning to the just, in the consideration of the evils 
which are in the world, and of the obstacles which the perverse wills 
of men present to the beneficent designs of God. “Signa tua in fron- 
tibus virorum lugentium,’”? says Ezechiel. «See how good it is to 
mourn for evils,’’ adds St. Odo, of Cluny, “since it makes men worthy 
of receiving the stigmata of the cross.”’t ‘The soul of a true Christ- 
ian,’ says Louis of Blois, ‘ought, after the example of Jesus Christ, 
to feel a profound sadness in considering the great number of men who 
not only do not honour God, but whose impiety despises him, and who 
lose themselves by sin. How is it possible without grief to behold the 
ruin of such noble creatures ?’’{ 
“*O ye misguided souls! 

Infatuate, who from such a good estrange 

Your hearts, and bend your gaze on vanity, 

Alas for you !”’|| 
And here I am tempted to borrow a similitude from history, which may 
place this matter in a stronger light than could be derived from mere 
discourse of reason; for what must have been the desolation of those 
few Syracusans, who, as Thucydides relates, believed Hermocrates, 
and feared for the future, when all the rest of the people were divided, 
some affirming that the Athenians would in no manner come, and that 
what was said could not be true; and others, that if they did come it 
would be to their own greater loss; and others, wholly despising the 
news, turned the matter to a jest and laughter.§ We have here an 


* S. Augustini cont. Julian. lib. iv. 16. 
+ S. Odonis Collat. lib. ii. Bibliothec. Cluniac. + Institut. Spiritual. cap. vi. 
| Dante, Parad. ix. § Lib. vi. 35. 


188 MORES CATHOLICI; or, 


emblem of what passes in the world at all times with regard to the pre- 
dicted vengeance of Heaven; and can it be strange that the insensibility 
of the majority of men, should fill the hearts of the prudent with mourn- 
ing and dismay? How can they not mourn when they behold men at 
variance with the truth, who, as Dante says,— 
“ Dream, though their eyes be open; reckless some 

Of error: others well aware they err, 

To whom more guilt and shame are justly due. 

Each the known track of sage philosophy 

Deserts, and has a by-way of his own: 

So much the restless eagerness to shine 

And love of singularity prevail.” * 


Alas, in every age the desolation caused by heresy has afflicted the 
hearts of the faithful. In the fifth century, we are told that so great 
and innumerable were the horrors of heresy, that not only it was difficult 
to enumerate, but that it was disgusting to name them. ‘The subtlety 
of diabolic fraud had so immerged them in the sense of those who per- 
ish, that even heretics believed that they had their heretics. Thus men 
abandoned apostolical tradition, and followed masters of perfidy.t If 
this were true in the fifth age, what must have been the mourning in 
that which beheld the commencement of the last great schism, when 
Christ’s holy Church, her divine faith, and her tremendous mysteries, 
were in so many places « disglorified, blasphemed, and had in scorn by 
the rebellious rout amidst their wine 2?” ‘“«'Pruly,”’ says the mild and 
humble Louis of Blois, «« when I consider the arrogance and impiety of 
the heretics of our age, I can scarcely refrain from tears: for they will 
not obey the Church; they refuse to be subject to its superiors ; they 
esteem as nothing the primacy of the chief Pontiff, who is the supreme 
vicar of Christ ; they petulantly insult the Apostolic See: followers of 
a monstrous confusion, and revilers of the divine ordination, they wish 
the visible Church to be without a visible head on earth; they abolish 
and deride the solitary sacramental confession; heaps of blasphemies 
against the sacred eucharist, that fountain of divine love and of all good, 
and against that celestial sacrifice of the mass, I say against that mys- 
tery of ineffable dignity, they produce with a barbaric and pagan irrey- 
erence.’’{ 

To make no mention as yet of those persecutions, which must be 
spoken of in reference to a different beatitude from what we are now 
considering, sorrow was unavoidable on a view of the injury inflicted 
on the Church by the conduct of false disciples. Alas! there has been 
no age in which this was not a fruitful source of mourning to the just. 
‘‘ We have internal as well as external combats,” says St. Boniface, 
writing to the bishop Daniel, describing his missionary Jabours in Sax- 
ony, ‘‘as when some priest or deacon of the Church departs from the 
faith and from truth. Tune deinde prorumpit cum paganis in contu- 
melias filiorum Ecclesia, et est obstaculum horrendum evangelio gloria 
Christi.”’|| St. Francis Xavier found that the greatest obstacle to the 


* Parad. xxix. 

T Consultatio Zachei Christiani et Apollonii Philosophi, lib. xi. cap. 11. Apud 
Dacherii Spicileg. tom. x. t Ludovic. Blosii Collyr. Hereticorum, lib. ii. cap. I. 

| S. Bonif. Mart. et Archiep. Epist. iii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 189 


establishment of the faith in the great kingdoms of Asia, came from the 
Christians themselves—those false, worldly-wise Christians, who pro- 
test against fanaticism.* ‘The love of gain induced some of the richest 
Portuguese merchants at Sancian to put a stop to the intended voyage 
of St. Francis Xavier to China—for they said that no doubt the governor 
of Canton would revenge his boldness upon them by seizing their ships 
and goods.t Wherever there wereeminent piety and service, there was 
reason to expect the enmity and attacks of men professing virtue, who 
would argue upon the dangers of excess of zeal. A fearful example of 
this fact is attested on the sides of the Rocky Hall, which served for 
refectory to the monks of St. Benedict at San Cosimato, where is paint- 
ed the miraculous preservation of the blessed Father St. Benedict from 
poison. There are always persons to whom the common dictates of 
piety seem like the ravings of fanaticism. Catharine de Medicis termed 
it bigotry to desire that the theatres should be closed in Lent.{. Plato 
says that if a man judges well, he will be of opinion that there are few 
men very good or very wicked, rods d& perakd waeizrovs.|| No doubt, this 
continued to be the case even in happier times; and it is no less cer- 
tain, that from those persons who profess and desire to remain in a me- 
dium state, the most afflicting embarrassments proceed, which present 
obstacles to the advancement of truth, the extension of happiness, and 
the greater glory of God. According to the circumstances of men does 
the enemy lay his snares; and thus he labours to inspire those who are 
within the pale,—where none perish by a false belief,—with a secret 
hate and disrelish for their own brethren, and with a corresponding ineli- 
nation to esteem their adversaries. St. Peter the Venerable, the fourth 
abbot of Cluny, was accused by some of the monks of Clairvaux of not 
following the rule to which he was bound,—of composing laws himself, 
and of casting aside the precepts of the Fathers,—of breaking the vows 
which he had made to St. Benedict, and of despising the authority of 
Bishops in the government of his abbey,—of being too severe and too 
merciful. Without looking farther into this dark volume, methinks 
here was enough to make many say with Hesiod, that it would be bet- 
ter to die than to have lived to know of such things. 

Moreover, if we reflect upon the influence of the Catholic religion 
upon the human mind, and upon the new relation in which it places 
men with regard to the events and circumstances of the world, we shall 
easily understand why Catholics, even during the ages of greatest faith, 
should have mourned more than other men: for, being imbued by their 
divine religion with the principles and the love of order, they necessa- 
rily feel more intensely the disorders introduced by sin into human soci- 
ety. Having the knowledge of truth, the prevalence of error,—which 
they know to be such,—must unavoidably fill them with more afflic- 
tion; and having to maintain positive principles, which are unceasingly 
attacked by the power of darkness, their life, in an intellectual as well 
as in a moral sense, becomes a continued combat. The moderns, on the 
other hand, from being imbued with no principles or love of order, are 
consequently indifferent to the reign of confusion and disorder. Having 


a 


* Bouhours, Vie de S, F. X. I. 138. + Id. ii. 8. 
$ Journal de Hen. III. 3. p. 180. _ | Pheedo. § S, Pet. Ven. Epist. lib. i. 28. 


190 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


no certain apprehension of truth, they are not grieved at the support 
which is given to a thousand errors, all of which, for any thing they 
know to the contrary, may be truths, since, from their own highest 
authority, there may be always an appeal to the suggestions of every 
man’s own mind; and, having no decided ground to maintain, it 
matters little to them what principles men choose to attack, for they feel 
an interest in none. They can immediately shift their position as an 
Opponent advances, for they place their glory in believing that there may 
be equal truth in opposite systems,—so they stretch out their hands to 
all fraternal nullities, and lay claim to the favour of all men alike. Hu- 
manly speaking, therefore, they have fewer intellectual causes for 
mourning than those of the faithful fold; who cannot but feel disorder 
and recognise error, and stand to meet the enemy, whose momentary 
victories they can never celebrate as their own. If to this consideration 
we add the effects of the new relation in which Catholicism places 
many men with regard to the circumstances of the world, we shall dis- 
cern still further reason for the mourning of the just. Ah! how must 
he mourn, in lands which heresy has devastated, whose eyes are sud- 
denly awakened to the divine light of heavenly truth, enabling him to 
judge rightly for the first time of the character of past events, which 
before, perhaps, had been the theme of his pride and rejoicing. When 
led by grace divine to hear the old instructors, their sanctity so wins 
upon him, that while kings and penal laws pursue them, he mixes his 
tears with their’s, and has thence no desire left on earth but still to suc- 
cour them. What must be his bitterness, to whom the accumulated 
woes and horrors of more than three centuries are presented suddenly, 
in all their nakedness and terror! In an instant, all that ideal of beauty 
and excellence, which his mind had so long nourished, perishes, and 
he beholds in its place revealed the secrets of Heaven’s vengeance. 
‘‘ Wretched man !”’ with hand against his breast he cries, **in what 
blindness hast thou hitherto lived! The friends and martyrs of God 
thou didst esteem fools, and their life and death without honour; the 
cruel persecutors, the unjust judges, the base and hypocritical ministers 
of tyranny, have had all thy esteem: the sorrows of the just have been 
unknown to thee ; their holy discipline thou didst despise. Alas! thou 
hast misconstrued every thing. Who then can wonder at thy tears and 
desolation? the burden of many ages on thee light at once, by thy retro- 
spect reviving to torment thee with the thought that they have been”? 
With regard to themselves, too assuredly such men are not long in 
discovering, that there is a woe reserved which will affect them person- 
ally in the nearest and dearest affections of their heart; for, from the 
hour that they declare openly for the Church of Christ in Opposition to 
the profane city and to the innumerable sects of false religions which 
are made subservient to its interests, calumny, suspicion deep, and 
hatred, will be directed against them. They are but just converted ; 
and see already how their ancient friend, perhaps their brother, doth 
begin to make them Strangers to his looks of love. «+ Extraneus factus 
sum fratribus meis,’? we may hear them mournfully sing ; ‘‘ et peregri- 
uus filiis matris mez.’”* There will not be wanting, perhaps, even in 


* Psalm Ixviii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 191 


the circle of those who once appeared most to esteem them, persons 
grave and seeming holy, who will traduce them in the minds of men, 
“« Blighting their life in best of its career, 
Branding their thoughts as things to shun and fear.” 

Moreover, to Catholics, who desire that the glory of the Creator 
should be extended over the whole earth, and who feel for the calamities 
of the most distant members of the city of God as intensely as for those 
of the persons nearest to them, the course of human events of itself 
presents a more tragic and melancholy aspect than to inconsiderate and 
selfish men, who care for nothing but what immediately concerns their 
own interest. What an affecting description do we find in the chroni- 
cles of the middle ages, of the mourning in which all Europe was 
plunged, whenever any calamitous intelligence came from the East! It 
was in the reign of Henry VI. that the news arrived at Crowland Abbey 
of the fall of Constantinople, that most celebrated Christian city. ‘* Woe 
to us Christians who have sinned,” exclaims upon this occasion the 
monk of Crowland. ‘Why, O Lord, were we born to behold with 
weeping eyes the desolation of our people and the affliction of our 
sacred religion? ‘The patriarchal seats, worthy of such veneration,— 
Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem,—are oppressed 
with the yoke of slavery or occupied by Saracens and Turks. Chris- 
tianity is reduced as if into an angle of the world!”’* The fall of Jeru- 
salem, the profanation of the holy city, the loss of the holy sepulchre, 
the sufferings of the chivalry of Palestine, the calamities to which all 
the Christians of the East would be subject,—these were reflections 
which turned into houses of mourning every castle and every cottage in 
France and England. «Vox turturis, vox doloris et gemitus fines Chris- 
tianorum usque ad mundi ultima Jamentabili novitate rumoris perculit,”’ 
says Godfrey the monk.t When to this common grief was added the 
pastoral solicitude for the Church, the mourning exceeded the endurance 
of mortals. Pope Urban III. died of grief on hearing at Ferrara of the 
fall of Jerusalem. Nicholas V. never recovered from the melancholy 
which seized him on hearing of the capture of Constantinople by the 
Turks; and Clement IX. died of grief in consequence of the capture of 
Candia by the infidels. 

But we have not yet glanced at the most mysterious and yet most 
general cause for the mourning of the devout heart during the ages of 
faith. The master of the sentences says of holy men, ‘“ that in con- 
templating the great event of the death of Christ, they both rejoice and 
mourn. ‘De eodem ergo letabantur et tristabantur.’ ”’f 

«‘ Religion,’ says a philosopher, ‘“ involves infinite mourning. In 
order to love God, (he means not with love of preference, but with 
affection) he must require help. How wondrously is this problem 
solved in Christianity !’’|| Hear how St. Theresa speaks : «The pains 
of death have encompassed me,” said the royal prophet, speaking in 
the name of Christ, ‘«O what a dreadful evil is sin, when it can cause 
such pain and even death toa God! Christians, now you are called 


a 


* Hist. Croylandensis, 529, in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptor. tom. 1 
+ Godefrid. Monach. ap. Freher. Script. tom. i. p. 250. 
{ Petri Lomb. lib. i. Distinct. xlviii. | Novalis Schriften ii. 305. 


192 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


upon to fight in defence of your King. Now you must follow him in 
this great desertion. There remains to him but a very small number of 
subjects, and the crowd follows the standard of Satan; and some who 
wish to be styled his friends in public, betray him in secret, and there 
is hardly any one left in whom he can perfectly confide! O thou only 
true friend, what ingratitude in him who betrays thee! O ye who are 
true Christians, weep with your God: the tears which he shed were not 
for Lazarus alone; but also for all those whom he foresaw would refuse 
to rise when he should ery to them with a loud voice commanding them 
to come forth from the tomb.’’* Here then was a source of mourning 
in comparison with which all other afflictions were unworthy of men- 
tion; for, 
“Upon such a shrine, 
What are our petty griefs? Let no man number his.” 


‘Suffer me to be an imitator of the passion of my God,”’ says St. 
Ignatius the Martyr in his epistle to the Romans. What an amazing 
and sublime rule is that which St. Bonaventura proposes as the first fruit 
of meditating on the passion of Christ, that the highest and most perfect 
religion, the rule of all perfection of life and virtue, consists in imitating 
the passion and death of Christ, and endeavouring to be conformable to 
him in all his sufferings.t «* Abhorreo videre cor meum non vulnera- 
tum,”’ saith he, ‘‘ cum videam te Salvatorem sic pro me vilissime cruci 
afixum. Nolo enim, Domine, sine vulnere vivere, quia te video vulne- 
ratum.’’t 

So the Church prays, ‘ that we who celebrate the mysteries of our 
Lord’s passion may imitate what we commemorate.’’|| ‘* The ascent 
of the soul by wisdom from the passion is in this manner,”’ says St. 
Bonaventura, ‘‘ when a man considers that most. blessed passion which 
I am not worthy to name, in which He of almighty power was trampled 
upon for us, He, of infinite wisdom, treated as a fool, and He, the best 
and highest, filled with bitterness and condemned to a shameful death, 
from this the mind rises to an admiration of such divine condescension 
and benignity; and then, when it masticates that passion of its Lord 
Jesus, all the ardour of its love begins to be directed towards him ; it 
feels a taste of a certain ineffable sweetness, and its appetite is, as it 
were, appeased with bitterness. The whole interior of man is thus 
alienated from itself, and rests in Christ. O mira et a seculis res inau- 
dita! In ineffabili amaritudine, dulcor indicibilis reperitur.§ Nay,” 
continues this seraphic doctor, «in mourning, men fulfill all the virtues 
to which beatitude is promised.”>—< The splendour of the beatitudes 
shines forth in the blessed passion of our Lord, which is properly their 
fountain and origin. For who is poor in spirit unless Christ naked 
upon the cross? Who is meek unless he who was led as a sheep to the 
slaughter, and who, as a lamb, opened not his mouth? Who mourns, 
unless he who, with a great cry and tears, offered up supplications for 
his enemies, who lamented for our sins, and had compassion on our 
miseries ? Who hungered and thirsted after justice unless Christ upon 
the cross, satisfying for our sins and thirsting after the salvation of 


ee! eee 


* Exclamat. x. tS. Bonaventur. Stimul. Amoris. pars. i. cap. 4. 
+ Id. cap. 2. || Secret. 2d Septemb. § Stim. Amoris, pars i. cap. 7. 


AGES OF FAITH. 193 


souls?) Who is merciful unless that Samaritan who bore our infirmities 
upon his own body? Where is cleanness of heart seen unless in him 
who cleansed our hearts with his precious blood? Who is pacific, 
unless he who is our peace, and hath reconciled us to God in his blood? 
Who suffers persecution for sake of justice, unless he who was cruci- 
fied by the Jews, against whom men blasphemed and bore lying testi- 
mony ?’’* 

The writers of the middle ages say, ‘‘ that the heart which loves God 
is overwhelmed with affliction at the thought of having ever preferred 
the vain joys of the world to the sweetness of present sorrow, that it 
mourns and despises itself for having ceased to mourn, that it mourns 
for having left the cross to go to the house of merriment. ‘True,”’ 
say they, ‘‘ our sweet adorable Lord went to grace with his presence 
the marriage feast: he would even contribute to its hilarity and assist 
the poverty of the bridegroom; but all the while he knew that he him- 
self was advancing to his passion; that his repose was to be the bloody 
cross, and his feast the vinegar and gall. O divine Jesus! how hard 
is it for one who loves thee to seek for joy. It is permitted him. 
Yes, thou smilest upon his youth and biddest him’ be happy and holy ; 
but ah! he would follow thee to that dread garden where thou wert be- 
trayed, he would follow thee to weep and knock the breast, and to kiss 
thy bleeding wounds; he would remain at thy sepulchre weeping with 
the holy women. My sweet adorable Saviour is in agony, and do you 
bid me join the rout of revellers? he is betrayed and condemned, and do 
you bid me rejoice with the world which rejected him? O no; better is 
it to remain apart and pour forth pitying tears with holy Mary, the queen 
of heaven and mistress of the world, who stood by the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, full of sadness! Happy senses of the blessed Virgin 
Mary,” exclaims the Church, ‘“ which, without dying, deserved the palm 
of martyrdom beneath the cross of our Lord.”’t Ah suffer me to mourn 
with her, tear me not away from this cross, from this tomb: 


“Eia mater, fons amoris, me sentire vim doloris: 
Fac ut tecum lugeam. 
Fac me vere tecum flere, crucifixo condolere 
Donec ego vixero.” 


Wounded with these strokes, inebriated with this blood, may I be 
guarded by the cross, and delivered by the death of Christ. 

‘‘ Perish the joys that would separate me from those who mourn; per- 
ish the honours, the triumph, that would require smiles not tears, rejoic- 
ing, not mourning. Ah, for a little while I was enticed to join the mirth- 
ful crew, and my soul was filled with a different kind of bitterness. It 
seemed as if I had been condemned to mourn no more with the just, con- 
demned never more to make one of those who sing the pathetic ‘ stabat 
mater,”’ the ‘‘ inviolata,” or ‘salve Regina,”’ or ‘ vexilla Regis,” and that 
seemed equivalent to the sadness and the whole weight of sin and death. 
O with what transport did I hail my first sweet returning tears ; and how 
was my spirit dissolved in an ecstacy of delight, when I found that I 
might become again a mourner, and lose the memory of ungrateful joy. 


* Stim. Amoris, pars i. cap. 8. + Commun. fest. of the 7 dolours. 


Vou. I.—25 R 


194 MORES CATHOLIC; oR, 


Flow fast my tears, flow fast for my having wished to banish ye, for 
my having forgotten and betrayed my infant Saviour, my despised Sav- 
iour, my crucified Saviour. What joy is comparable to the sweetness 
of these tears! Certainly not the world’s joy; not for all that it can 
offer would I ever again exchange them. Only Paradise, only the 
blessed face of Christ, only the ineffable beatific vision of God in his 
eternal glory can make my soul forget them.”’ They are the expres- 
sions of mourners, but the foretaste of heaven; belonging to earth, but 
never to be wiped from the eyes of those who aspire after innocence, till 
the day of glory comes, that day of joy which shall never end. 

Here we are naturally directed to inquire respecting those penitential 
exercises of which we find such repeated mention in the history of the 
ages of faith; for we must already have touched at the source from which 
they sprung, and this is a subject which belongs intimately to the his- 
tory of ancient manners. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Tuar the spirit of mortification, of self-sacrifice, and of penance be- 
longed to the mourning of the faithful, is manifest from what has been 
already seen respecting the order of their life and the natural desire of 
their hearts; but independent of incidental causes, it was of necessity 
characteristic of the Christian discipline, in consequence of the express 
requisition of God, and of the positive advantages which resulted from 
it in the progress to spiritual perfection. 'The words of Christ admitted 
of no exceptions, ‘‘ Abneget semetipsum, et tollat crucem suam quoti- 
die.”’* ‘* What is the question,” asks Tertullian, «you are anxious to 
know—if your penance will be useful to you or not before God? What 
does it matter? God commands you to do it; is not that enough to 
oblige you to obey him? When there should be nothing but the respect 
which is due to his authority, he deserves that you should have regard 
to him in preference to your own utility.”*+ The command is without 
exception. ‘The vessel of election was not dispensed from this law, and 
hence we read ‘‘Castigo corpus meum.’’{ David who sinned had no 
escape, though he was the man after God’s own heart. It was penance 
which rendered him so, as St. Ambrose intimates. ‘* Peccavit David,” 
says he, ‘quod solent Reges: sed penitentiam gessit, flevit, ingemuit, 
quod non solent Reges.”’|| Cause some find for doubt in that the Pagans 
_ have been known to practise austerities with the view of appeasing their 
deities ; but reason and tradition have enabled men in all ages to discern 
some truths, and if the consent of philosophers were a proof against a 


SS? Tiueix 23: t De Peenitent. { Epist. ad Corinth. i. cap. 9. 
| Lib. de Apolog. David. 


AGES OF FAITH. 195 


practice or a doctrine, there would be few points of Christian discipline, 
or faith secure. Besides there is a wide distinction to be observed here. 
There have been superstitions among the heathens, which induced their 
votaries to practise mortifications beyond which human nature cannot 
attain; but as Bourdaloue remarks, ‘the difference between Christians 
and the followers of Pagan severity consisted in this, that while these 
men mortified their flesh, they abandoned their minds to all the impulses 
of passion. Whereas the mortification of Christians was chiefly that of 
the heart, as a means to reform and purify it.”’** Otherwise, it was of 
no avail, insomuch that in relation to men who were truly contrite or 
truly inflamed with the love of God, the opinion of Fichte, at least in 
one sense, was correct, that for them there was no longer any self-de- 
nial; no longer any sacrifices; for the self which is to be denied, the 
objects which are to be sacrificed, have been removed from their 
sphere of vision, and enstranged from their affections. ‘This denial, 
these sacrifices, can only excite wonder in those who continue to 
value the objects of them, and who have not yet given them up; when 
once they are given up, they vanish into nothing, and we find that 
we have lost nothing. ‘he holy Fathers universally maintain the 
vanity of all corporal austerities, unless the mind and heart be cor- 
rected. with 

‘«‘ Beware,” says St. Jerome, ‘lest your fasts become a source of 
pride. You fast, and ill-humour makes you insupportable : another does 
not fast, and he is gentle to all the world. You lose by your vices the 
fruit of your mortification.”’t In what used to be styled the dark ages, 
St. Columban reminds his monks of the same distinction. ‘Do not 
suppose,” saith he, ‘that it is enough to fatigue the dust of our bodies 
with fasts and watchings, if we do not also reform our manners. To 
macerate the flesh, if the soul does not fructify, is to till the ground 
without ceasing, and never to reap fruit from it. What signifies it to 
carry on a distant war, if the interior be a prey to ruin? A religion, all 
of gestures and movements of the body, is vain. The suffering of the 
body alone is vain; the care which man takes of his exterior is vain, if 
he do not also watch and preserve his soul. ‘True piety consists in 
humility, not of the body, but of the heart. It is not enough to speak 
and read about virtues. Is it with words alone that a man cleanseth his 
house of filth? Can any work be accomplished without labour? Gird 
up your loins, then, and never cease to combat.’’{ Besides, after all, it 
is quite clear that the Christian spirit of self-sacrifice was unknown to 
the Pagans, and in vain shall we look for it in the scenes which recall 
the most renowned deeds of their heroic devotion. When we are led 
to expect an instance of this pure and noble spirit, it is rather a calcula- 
tion of evils, and the choice of the least, which gives rise to the appar- 
ent offering. ‘Thus, it is not until after a long examination of the indig- 
nities which await her, if she continue to live, that Macharia, in Eurip- 
ides, resolves to embrace death. It is better to die, she concludes, than 
to suffer such things;|| and, in like manner, in the Iphigenia, in Aulis, 
the spirit of the victim is completely opposite to that of sacrifice in the 


* Serm. sur la Sévérité Chrétienne. +S. Hieronym. Epist. ad Eustoch Virg. 
j S. Instit. ii. Bibliothec. Patrum, tom, xii. cap. 10. | Heraclid. 524. 


196 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Christian sense. ‘* What is the marriage of Paris and Helen to me? It 
is the sweetest of all things to behold the light’? — 


palveres bd”, O¢ eu eres 
Save’ nance Civ ueciooov, i Savely xeace.* 
So also Polyzena consents to die; but it is because she perceives that 
longer life would not be to her advantage, since she has lost the dignity 
of her ancestral rank, and all her hopes of being married to a king, since 
she is now a slave, a humiliation to which she is not accustomed, and 
in her situation it is a much more happy thing to die than to live, for to 
live not in honour is the greatest misery.t The Antigona, of Sophocles, 
presents, indeed, an instance of very high sentiment, but then it is mixed 
with hatred and contempt for the unjust decree of the tyrant, who has 
presumed to meddle in what concerns him not, the discharge of her do- 
mestic duties.{ But, say the Protestants, is not the indulgence in the 
spirit of sacrifice and mortification, and is not the whole doctrine of pen- 
ance an injury to the atonement, and a rejection of the grace of God? 
And besides this, surely, to use the words of Fichte, «* The voice of phi- 
losophy does not call upon us to mortify ourselves: O, no; it calls upon 
us to cast away that which affords no enjoyment; that when we have 
done so, that which is a teeming source of endless enjoyment, may come 
and take possession of our souls?’ The voice of philosophy, to reply 
in brief, has, no doubt, often pronounced things very sweet in compari- 
son with the bitterness of truth. Its error here does not consist in an 
over fine spinning of truth. It is essentially an error. The voice of 
God, whatever that of philosophy may say, calls upon men to mortify 
their corrupt nature upon earth, and to take up their cross daily; and, 
with respect to the theological arcument, it is quite a sufficient answer, 
that, if it were valid, Christ himself would not have required self-mortifi- 
cation in the words above cited, nor would his Apostles have practised 
it. It would be more to the purpose to inquire respecting what has 
been transmitted by the voice of the ancient Fathers, than concerning the 
affirmations of philosophy ; though Calvin might say, “he was not 
moved by what was every where found in the writings of the ancients 
on satisfaction.”’|| «* Dominus orandus est,”? says St. Cyprian, ‘‘Domi- 
nus nostra satisfactione placandus est. Qui sic Deo satisfecerit—letam 
faciet ecclesiam, nec jam solam Dei veniam merebitur, sed coronam,’’§ 
To the like effect speak Tertullian, St. Ambrose, and all the holy fath- 
ers, as may be seen at length in Sardagna, or any other dogmatical the- 
ologian.** St. Augustin expressly says, ‘* That it is not sufficient to 
change our manners for the better, and to depart from evil, unless we 
satisfy God, by penance, for the things which we have done, by the sac- 
rifice of a contrite heart, with alms co-operating.”’tf That man should 
be called to suffer, does not derogate, as the modern sects pretend, from 
the merits of Christ, in whom, as the Council of Trent observes, is all 
our glory, and in whom we satisfy God’s justice.”+t Though original 
sin has been remitted, man still suffers temporal death. Do they think 
it would be fair to conclude, from this fact, that the satisfaction of Christ 
was not full and abundant? Mortal sin is forgiven, and yet temporal 


* 1237, + Hecuba, 340. t 48, || Instit. lib. iii. c. 4. § 38. 
§ Tract. de Lapsis. ** Tom. viii. tt Serm. cccli. ++ Sess. xiv. cap. 8. 


AGES OF FAITH. 197 


penalty is exacted by God. Adam was pardoned, and yet condemned 
to die. Moses and Aaron were pardoned,* and yet punished, by not 
being permitted to enter the land of promise. David was pardoned,t 
and yet to punish him his son was condemned to die. St. Augustin 
draws the conclusion ;{ and the holy fathers, on similar ground, press 
the necessity for penance, to avert the punishment of God.|| Remission 
of temporal punishment is gratuitous, although man is to give satisfac- 
tion, because it is the free gift of God which enables his works to be sat- 
isfactory through Christ, and because these works are themselves the 
fruit of Divine grace. Our satisfactions are the means by which the 
price of redemption is applied to us; and this is a point which ought to 
present no difficulties to the Protestants, who admit that, without faith, 
the merits of Christ are not applied, although their value is independent 
of it. 

All theologians firmly believed, and clearly taught, that the satisfac- 
tion of Christ was sufficient, as far as price, to expiate all the sins of 
men, and that the private works of satisfaction were not required to sup- 
ply any defect in that price, but on account of the reasons thus explained 
by the Council of Trent:—*‘«It becomes the Divine clemency, that our 
sins should not be remitted to us without some satisfaction ; lest, taking 
occasion from lighter sins, we should fall into greater, becoming contu- 
melious to the Holy Spirit, treasuring up wrath to ourselves against the 
day of wrath. Without doubt, these satisfactory penalties recall men 
powerfully from sin, restrain them as if with a bridle, and make them 
more cautious and vigilant ; heal the wounds of former sins, and of for- 
mer vicious habits. In addition to this, by suffering for sin, we are made 
conformable to Jesus Christ, who satisfied for us—ex quo omnis nostra 
sufficientia est; and we have a pledge, that if we suffer with him, we shall 
also be glorified along with him.’’§ St. Ambrose says, ‘¢ That he has 
heard of persons who deny the merit of abstinence and fasting, and conti- 
nence,’’ whom he refutes, by reminding them of the sentences of St. Paul; 
and then he adds, ‘ Qui non castigant corpus suum, et volunt predicare 
aliis, ipsi reprobi habentur.’’*** The advantages derived from mortifica- 
tion of the senses, were clearly discerned during the ages of faith. ‘The 
wisdom of God explains why mortification should be good for man— 
‘‘Quoniam in igne probatur aurum et argentum, homines vero acceptabiles 
in camino humiliationis.”’tt There is a pain which purges and purifies, 
and a pain which consumes and devours: this last is the portion of the 
wicked. Pain, without penance, is the fire of hell. ‘‘ Woe to the here- 
tics,’ cries St. Ephrem, ‘‘ who say there is no such thing as penance. 
They deserve to be likened to those insane men who say there is no 
God; for to say that there is no God, or to annihilate his mercy by saying 
that there are no remedies able to cure the wounds of weak unassisted 
men, are one and the same thing. On the other hand, I grant to you, 
that there is no such thing as penance; but I mean for those who abuse 


* Num. 20. t Reg. 12, 13. tin Ps. fo 
|| Tertull. de Peenitent. 4. 8. Cyprian. de Lapsis. St. Jerome in Joelem. 8S. Chry- 
sostom. Hom 41. ad. pap. Antioch. 
§ Vide La Hogue Tractat. de Incarnatione, 92. Sardagna de Satisfactione. Theo- 
log. tom. viii. p. 217. ** Epist. lib. x. 82. tt Ecclus. c. 2. 5 
R 2 


198 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


penance, that they may sin, for this is to mock God.”’* «O divine clem- 
ency,’’ exclaims Basil, bishop of Seleucia, “to what a dignity does peni- 
tence attain! Men weep and God is changed; mortals lament, and the 
immortal decree is cancelled !”+ The reason of the early philosophers 
and the judgment of the ancients generally, pointed out to them the 
advantages of mortification. The Pythagoreans observed abstinence 
from flesh as conducive to purity of mind, health of body, and prompti- 
tude of understanding.t Aurelian, the Emperor, ascribed his constant 
health to a custom of abstaining one day in every month from food and 
drink. Augustus Cesar was remarkable for his abstinence, as Sueto- 
nius relates. Plato adopted an austere life. Hermodius arrived at the 
age of an hundred, Democritus and Hippocrates at that of an hundred 
and five, by a life of abstinence. Drexelius mentions, as among the 
many fruits of fasting, «« The rendering serene all the senses, external 
and internal ;”’ || so the Church, in her prayer at the beginning of Lent, 
speaks of ‘* This solemn fast, which is a wholesome institution, to heal 
both our souls and bodies.” In the primitive Church, fasts were enti- 
tled stations. ‘Our fasts are camps to us,” says St. Ambrose, ‘‘ which 
defend us from diabolic attacks ; and they are called stations, because, 
standing in them, we repel our enemy.’ How remarkable are the fol- 
lowing words of the sacred text, “ Jejunium nescit foeneratorem, non 
sortem fceneris novit: non redolet usuras mensa jejunantium.’’§ In the 
history of the middle ages, we have this sentence illustrated ; for it was 
not so common then, as in modern times, to witness the fall and ruin of 
ancient and noble houses, to hear of their being stript of their ancestral 
domains, or become the spoil of usurers. The spirit of the Catholic 
discipline, which they observed, was unacquainted with the terms mort- 
gage and interest ; and we find, in consequence, that patrimonial estates 
were retained through a long succession of ages. St. Basil the Great, 
says, ‘That all the saints have rendered their lives worthy by fasting.’’** 
All the most holy and approved persons that we read of in the sacred 
pages, Moses, Elias, Juditha, Esther, Sarah, Job, Tobias, Esdras, 
David, Ezekiel, are expressly recorded to have fasted. Daniel fed on 
pulse, and wisdom gained. In the new law, our Saviour Christ set us 
an example. St. Paul, Barnabas, Simon, Lucius, and other followers 
of Paul, were in many fastings. St. Gregory Nazianzen says, ** That 
St. Peter almost always fasted, and ate only beans.’’ St. Matthew, as 
St. Clemens Alexandrinus testifies, lived upon herbs and roots. It is 
recorded of St. James the Greater, of St. James the Less, Bishop of 
Jerusalem, and of St. John, that they always abstained from flesh meat. 
Honey and locusts were the food of the Precursor in the Wilderness ; 
and Hegesippus relates, «*’That the first Christians were taught to ab- 
Stain, by the blessed Mare Pontif, of Alexandria.” Passing on to later 
ages, we find Theodosius the Younger accustoming himself to fast twice 
every week, and to abstain from wine in Lent, Charlemagne fasting even 
to the risk of injuring his health, Otho the Great, making his whole army 
observe a fast, before giving battle to the Hungarians, Lothaire, King of 
ringette POR lle i 

* S. Ephrem. Tractat. de Posnitentia. t Basil Sentent. or 12. 


+ Jamblic. de Pathagoric. Vita, cap. 16. || Hier. Drexelius de Jejunio, lib. ii. cap. 5. 
§ Judith, cap. 1, 2. ** De Laude Jejunii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 199 


the Franks, continuing to observe a fast during a dangerous illness, and 
the Emperor Ferdinand I. adopting a rule of great abstinence after the 
death of his excellent wife. Of the abstinence and self-control of Ro- 
dolph the Emperor, history relates an heroic instance; for being on an 
expedition with his army, and oppressed with thirst, a vessel of water, 
which a peasant was carrying, was immediately seized upon, and brought 
to him as a great treasure; but he ordered it to be restored to the peasant, 
untouched, saying, ‘‘I thirst not for myself, but for my army.’’* 

In a future place, when I shall come to speak of the festivals and sea- 
sons of the Church, it will be necessary to return to this subject, and 
describe at more length, the manners of the middle ages, in relation to 
the ecclesiastical law of fasting and abstinence. Solemn public pen- 
ance, instituted on occasion of the Novatian heresy, which accused the 
Church of being too indulgent in receiving back sinners, was abrogated 
earlier in the Greek than in the Western Church. In the latter, it ceas- 
ed with the seventh century, when alms, pilgrimages, and confinement 
in monasteries, were substituted for it, which alteration is, by some, 
ascribed to Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a Greek. 
The ancient severity, however, did not begin to be relaxed until after 
the eleventh century. In the times of greatest fervour, the discipline 
of the Church respecting the greatness and duration of penance was 
never invariable. Each age, each province, had its customs. In one 
place, public penance was reserved for very few crimes; in another it 
was required for a greater number. ‘The same sins were not punished 
with equal rigour, but much depended upon the local judicature. Uni- 
versally, however, the fundamental parts of penance were the same; so 
that the objection advanced by heretics, against the use of the word pen- 
ance, is a mere quarrel about words. ‘That a change of mind was 
requisite, every one knew without having studied Greek, or heard their 
pedantic eloquence. 

The first thing required in penance was the ordination of the mind to 
God: but, says St. Thomas, ‘‘the mind cannot duly be converted to 
God without charity.’’*t And elsewhere he says, ‘* Omnes virtutes par- 
ticipant aliquid de charitate.”’{ And St. Benard says, ‘‘ Charity con- 
verts the soul.’’|| Hence, St. Augustin says, that unless the Holy 
Spirit should make man a lover of God, he will not be transferred from 
the left hand to the right.§ It would require but a slight acquaintance 
with the history of religion to be able to detect the error of those modern 
writers, who, speaking of such men as the Count of Anjou, apply the 
term ‘‘miserable’’ to the penitents of the middle ages. If penitents,— 
in the sense in which the word was then used,—no men were less mis- 
erable. Assuredly it was not an unhappy state for man, born the child 
of wrath, and fallen from baptismal innocence, to be dismissed from the 
sacred tribunals as were Adam and Eve from Paradise, 

“Sent forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace.” 


It was in allusion to spirits far more grievously afflicted, though 
resembling these penitents of earth, that the great poet of the ages of 
faith exclaimed, 


* Drexelius de Jejunio, lib. i. c. 3. + Lib. iv. cont. Gentes, cap. 72. 
t In iii. Dist. 26. art. 2. | De diligendo Deo, 12. § De Trinitate, lib. xv, 18. 


200 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


“O spirits! secure, 
Whene’er the time may be, of peaceful end !””* 


And of whom he elsewhere says, 


“‘ He show’d me many others, one by one: 
And all, as they were nam’d, seem’d well content, 
For no dark gesture I discern’d in any.”’+ 


In the air and countenance of one of these penitents of the middle 
ages, if suddenly one of them could be introduced into a circle of the 
most refined modern society, there would be nothing to strike the atten- 
tion as remarkable, excepting, perhaps, a more than ordinary gentleness 
and dignity. Hear how St. Jerome describes Asella: ‘‘ Nothing can 
be milder than her severity, nothing more severe than her mildness; 
nothing more melancholy than her sweetness, nothing sweeter than her 
melancholy. Her figure denotes mortification without the least parade ; 
her words are like silence, and her silence has words: her exterior is 
always the same; her dress exhibits nothing refined or curious; her 
ornaments consist in their plainness. The good speak of her with 
admiration, and the wicked dare not attack her. Let the priests of the 
Lord, on beholding her, be filled with profound veneration.’ ’*t 

In the ages of greatest fervour, a due and rational attention to health 
was never excluded in the most austere discipline of penitents. St. 
Jerome, in condemning immoderate fasts and austerities, quotes the 
saying of the seven sages of Greece,—‘« Nothing too much;” and de- 
clares it to be as wise and just a maxim as it is celebrated.|| St. Bona- 
ventura mentions that the blessed St. Francis would never suffer his fri- 
ars to injure their health by too much severity. Experience, indeed, 
would here suffice. St. Hilarion lived to the age of eighty-four; St. 
Augustin and St. Jerome, Paphnutius, Macarius and St. Francis de 
Paul, lived to ninety ; St. Anthony to one hundred, Udalricus, Bishop 
of Padua, to one hundred and five; St. Simeon Stylites to one hundred 
and ten; St. Paul the Hermit to one hundred and thirteen ; Arsenius 
and Romualdus to one hundred and twenty years: and all, after a life 
of rigid abstinence and fasting. Hear how St. Chrysostom writes to 
Olympias: ‘Neither the rigour of winter nor the weakness of my 
health, should inspire you with any fear. The winter, though as severe 
as in Armenia, and that is to say every thing, does not incommode me 
to excess, for we have taken measures against it, and we neglect noth- 
ing to secure us from its inconveniences. For that purpose we keep up 
a good fire—we carefully exclude the external air from our apartment— 
we cover ourselves with many clothes ; and, as a last resource, we keep 
within doors. After my example, venerable Olympias, attend to your 
health; I conjure you, I ask it of you as a grace. Direct all your atten- 
tion to keep off infirmities. Remember too, that sadness can cause infir- 
mities. Think of the misery of those whose body is worn down by 
sickness, and reduced to such a-state that they can no longer enjoy 
either the seasons or the things needful to life. 1 implore you then to 
procure the assistance of the most skilful physicians, and to apply the 
NAA MRM Ne ERMINE TUS Mayor ll 

* Dante, Purg. xxvi. ft Id. xxiv. t S. Hieronym. Epist. ad Marcellam. 

| Epist. ad Demetriad. 


AGES OF FAITH. 201 


proper remedies to deliver you from these maladies.’’*—If some 
should come and say to you not to fast, lest you should be made weak, 
do not believe them nor listen to them,’’ says St. Athanasius, ‘for by 
them the enemy suggests this. Remember what is written,—that when 
the three children and Daniel, and the other captive youths, were led by 
the King of Babylon, and commanded to eat of his table, and they re- 
fused, and did eat only of the seeds of the earth, that, after ten days, 
when introduced into the presence of the king, their faces, instead of 
being squalid, appeared more beautiful than those of the others who had 
been fed at the royal table. See then,’’ continues this great saint, ‘that 
fasting does not produce what you dread. It cures diseases, it dries up 
the humours of the body; it puts the demon to flight; it expels bad 
thoughts ; it renders the mind clearer, the heart purer, the body holier ; 
and, in short, it raises man to the throne of God.”’ 

Finally: in the Father of the Scholastic Theology, we find the same 
counsels of prudence and moderation :—** Injure not your health,”’ says 
St. Anselm. ‘* Melius est enim ut cum salute corporis, leto animo ali- 
quid faciatis, quam per egritudinem ab his que cum letitia bene facitis, 
deficiatis.”’t ‘Thus, those extravagant and gloomy images of penance, 
which some men associate with the remembrance of the scholastic-ro- 
mantic ages, have, in general, no other foundation but the fancy of poets 
and the misrepresentation of the adversaries of the holy Church. 

But let us on; our length of way admonishes to speed, and we have 
to mark other instances of mortification and penance, as connected with 
the character of those who mourned with effectual grief. ‘To speak of 
the ordinary exercises which were recommended by the universal con- 
sent of the spiritually wise, would be long and needless. In this respect, 
the manners of the middle ages present nothing remarkable, excepting 
the fervour and sincerity with which the discipline of a penitential life 
was observed by men in every class of society. Behold that race of 
mourners, all downward lying, prone upon the ground, and weeping 
sore. ‘These are the elect of God, in whom repentant tears mature that 
blessed hour, when they shall find absolution from the holy Church, 
and with Heaven acceptance. ‘*My soul hath cleaved to the dust,” 
you hear with such deep sighs uttered, that they well nigh choke the 
words. But let us pass on to view still more remarkable fruits of pen- 
ance, undertaken by contrite sinners, some of whose voluntary penal 
woes are well calculated to excite our astonishment. Genebaud, Bishop 
of Laon, penetrated with a sense of the sinfulness of his conduct in 
having yielded to a foul temptation, sent to entreat St. Remi to come to 
Laon, at whose feet he prostrated himself, and confessed his fault. To 
repair the public scandal of his fall, the bishop shut himself up in a dark 
cell, more like a tomb than the abode of a living man, and there he 
passed seven years in prayer and fasting, tears and watching. During 
this time, St. Remi undertook the charge of his diocese, and at its expi- 
ration, he restored him to his episcopal see.t In the year 582, St. Hos- 
pice, a recluse, shut himself up in a tower to do penance, near a cele- 
brated monastery at Nice, in Provence. In that tower he lived a long 


* Letter to Olympias. + S. Anselmi Epist. cl. ad Goffrid. 
+ Anquetil, Hist. de Rheim, lib. i. 50. 


Vou. I].—26 


202 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


time till his death. Celebrated also was the example of Dominick Lo- 
ricat, or the Cuirassed, a renowned penitent at the end of the tenth cen- 
tury, so called because he wore next the skin a coat of mail, which he 
used to lay aside only for the discipline. The extraordinary austerities 
of this man furnished a striking lesson to the rude warriors who knew 
him, of the heinousness of sin. But as they were accustomed to a life 
of every kind of hardship, a moderate penance would have been counted 
for nothing: or rather, it would have seemed to them like a recognition 
of the lightness of sin. Some modern writers, who profess to philoso- 
phize, express the utmost astonishment at meeting with such acts of 
mortification in a religion which lays claim to peace and blessed charity : 
but such amaze will not be long the inmate of a thoughtful breast. If 
it had been evinced in ages of faith, they who expressed it would have 
been referred for solution to the Gospel which is read on the first Sun- 
day of that solemn season, when the Church sings ‘‘ Creator alme side- 
rum,’ and reminds men of the coming of our Lord to judgment; and 
of those dread words, ‘* And these shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment, but the just unto life eternal.’’—*‘* What will be the tribunal of 
the Judge,”’ cries St. Augustin, ‘‘ when the cradle of the infant terrified 
proud kings.”** Who can think of the day of his coming? and who 
will stand to behold him? At that tremendous hour of last judgment, 
when, as St. Ephrem says, ‘the priest will be separated from the 
priest, the bishop from the bishop, the father from the son, the daughter 
from the mother,—when the reprobate, cast off from before the face of 
God, will find themselves alone, deprived of all assistance, abandoned 
even by hope,—when they will ery, ‘O how could we lose in indiffer- 
ence the time that was given us! What shall we do? Alas! we can 
no longer do penance! ‘The time is past. No more shall we see the 
innumerable legions of angels and saints, no more shall we contemplate 
that true light which enlightens the abode of the blessed! Behold us 
here isolated, rejected, far from God, far from joy. Farewell, ye just; 
farewell, apostles, prophets, martyrs. Farewell, all ye that are happy 
and holy !’’t 

These were the considerations which moved men with such force to 
do penance seriously ; for they said with St. Augustin, ‘‘ If man wished 
to punish himself, God would spare him. Sit oportet ipse severus in 
se, ut in eum sit misericors Deus.’’t 

Hear how St. Odo, the abbot of Cluny, speaks of the danger of sin; 
and consider what an impression such words must have made upon the 
simple, profound, and susceptible minds of men in the middle ages. 
«« Adam once sinned, and is dead. If you therefore should sin, expect 
not to be spared. If any one could have been spared, it would have 
been Adam, who was new-made, tender, and rude, and who had before 
known no sin ;—but as for you who wish to sin after the Law, after the 
Prophets, after the Gospel, after the Apostles,—what hope can there be 
of indulgence 2’ || 

There is one remarkable characteristic of the middle ages, which we 
should constantly bear in mind whenever we institute a comparison be- 


* Serm. ii. de Epiph. + Serm. Ixxii. t S. August. Serm. cclxxviii. 
| S. Odonis, Abb. Clun. ii. Collation. lib. ii. Bibliothec. Cluniac. 


AGES OF FAITH. 203 


tween them and our own times, in relation either to literature, art, or 
religion,—it is, that these things were all taken seriously, taken in earn- 
est. While hearing the moderns converse on subjects of religious truth, 
one might expect every moment that some of them would have suffi- 
cient acuteness and consistency as to propose a question like that of 
Callicles to Socrates, who, after hearing his noble statement of the 
evil of sin, consisting in its nature rather than in its punishment, ex- 
claims, ‘‘O Socrates, tell us whether you say these things seriously or 
only in jest, for if you are serious, and it be really true what you now 
say, without doubt it follows that our whole life is perverse, and that 
we do all things exactly contrary to what we ought.’’* 

In the middle ages, it is true men did not seem to believe that the way 
to heaven was precisely the broadest and easiest that presented itself to 
the senses; they were impressed with the idea that their souls could not 
be saved without retirement, meditation and occasional renouncement of 
lawful pleasures ; many of the penitential austerities were no doubt great ; 
but who can hear without trembling what St. Gregory says, ‘‘ that more 
men perish by means of false penance than by impenitence itself; ”’ and 
after this, who can feel inclined to criticise the penitents of ages of faith ? 
It is not, however, to be denied, but that occasionally the spirit of human 
severity may have mixed itself with the austerity of penance, so as to have 
occasioned great and grievous abuse. When the passions of men are 
strong, they are sometimes fearful even in the deeds which spring from 
virtuous sources; and the facts of ancient history are not to be concealed 
because some men in modern times have chosen to exaggerate and pervert 
them thoughtlessly, or for malignant purposes. The horrible tale pro- 
fessing to reveal the secrets of monastic penance in the middle ages, which 
the genius of a modern bard has rendered so familiar, contains abundant 
internal evidence, that the author wrote from vague and general report, 
and without having ever studied the subject which he pretended to illus- 
trate. Who that has read the rules of the blessed St. Benedict, breath- 
ing nothing but seraphic love and sanctity, will not lift up his hands in 
astonishment, on hearing that account of the judgment pronounced upon 
Constance de Beverly in the abbey of Lindisfarn, where the three Heads 
of houses are feigned to have sat for horrible doom : 


‘ All servants of Saint Benedict, 
The statutes of whose order strict 
On iron table lay!’ 


As if that boly book gave them authority to commit the barbarous deed 
which imparts such a horrible intent to this narrative. 

How grave and moral writers can be guilty of this strange readiness 
to admit and propagate slanders against the saintly and illustrious dead, 
I know not, nor is it necessary for us here to inquire. What we have 
to do is to examine the real facts which may have originally suggested 
the idea of this celebrated romance; and no one need shrink from such 
an investigation, through a tenderness for the character of former times, 
for it is no reproach peculiar to any age, that some men should have 
been found in it, who were without prudence or without charity. The 


a en nnn UE tthttdtEntttuEEESSSSnSSSnanS aE 


* Plat. Gorgias. 


204 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


first mention of a penitential prison for guilty monks, occurs in the writ- 
ings of St. John Climachus, who was abbot of Mt. Sinai, at the end of 
the sixth century. St. Benedict, who lived before this book of St. John 
Climachus had appeared, prescribed in his rule various modes of eorrec- 
tion for monks who offended, but he makes no mention of a prison; al- 
though in the X VIIIth chapter, he enumerates accurately all the precau- 
tions and punishments to be used before expelling a monk as incorrigi- 
ble. **But,”? says Mabillon, in his treatise on the Monastic prisons, 
‘the hardness of some abbots in subsequent times, was carried to such 
an excess, that they mutilated the limbs of some monks who were guilty 
of great crimes, so that the monks obtained from Charlemagne, an espe- 
cial decree for their protection. All the abbots being assembled at Aix- 
la-Chapelle, in 81'7, ordered that in each monastery there should be a 
retired house, domus semota, for the guilty, a chamber with a fire-place 
and an anti-chamber for work. This was ordained by all the abbots of 
the empire, France, Germany, and Italy. It was in subsequent times 
that Matthew Prior of St. Martin-des-Champs, according to the report 
of Peter the Venerable, invented a fearful kind of prison which was with- 
out light, and destined for those who were to be perpetually confined, 
and it was called the Vade in Pace. The abbot was guilty of this excess 
through his extravagant severity and hatred of sin; but he inflicted it 
upon only one criminal monk. Stephen, Archbishop of Toulouse, com- 
plained of these inventions to king John, ‘de horribili rigore quem 
monachi exercebant adversus monachos graviter peccantes.”’ This led 
to measures of prevention in future; Mabillon expresses his astonish- 
ment at such inhumanity in monks, who ought to be models of all gen- 
tleness and compassion; but it should be remembered how rare and iso- 
lated were such instances in the long succession of ages; how solitary 
they stand in history, and unconnected with any part of monastic disci- 
pline; and that after all, the immunities of the religious, who were not 
subject to the civil power, made some provision for the punishment of 
great offenders absolutely necessary. As for the story of Constance, it 
is utterly defective in regard to history, inasmuch as the extension of 
such penalties to communities of women is a mere invention; and even 
if the author had adhered to limits within which he would have had 
some foundation, the unwarranted assertions, to use the gentlest expres- 
sion, which are woven through the whole tissue of his poem, would, to 
any reader of moderate instruction, have destroyed all colouring of truth. 
This Matthew Prior of St. Martin-des-Champs, to whom he is so greatly 
indebted, was not to mankind but to sin a foe; ignorant it is true, but 
justifying no poet in the conclusion that he had retired into the cloister 
‘‘for despite and envy ;” or «that he joyed in doing ill.””. The whole 
abuse is to be ascribed to the extravagant zeal of some well-meaning men 
in times of great severity of principles ; and we find that there was no 
obstacle or delay in providing against it effectual remedies. 


AGES OF FAITH. 205 


CHAPTER V. 


We have already seen some of the works of mourning which were 
substituted for the solemn public penance of the ancient canons ; but that 
which in a literary or poetical point of view, is the most interesting of 
these works, remains to be considered, which consisted in the pilgrim- 
ages either expressly prescribed or voluntarily undertaken for the correc- 
tion of passions and the expiation of sins. Of the former, some were 
imposed for great offences as a more severe penalty than that which was 
enacted against them by the civil laws. Men who had committed hom- 
icide were ordered to go on pilgrimage to various holy places in foreign 
lands, bound all the while with iron chains, for in these ages capital 
punishment was rarely inflicted. These chains were worn round the 
neck and also on both arms; sometimes the pilgrims deserved to be freed 
from them, and then they were freed in the church.* The four misera- 
ble knights who murdered St. Thomas at Canterbury, after long wan- 
derings, were enjoined to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there to 
live as penitential converts on the black mountain. Some were to be 
condemned to pass the whole remainder of their lives on pilgrimage. 
Such were degraded priests who should have discovered the secret of 
confession. Deponatur, et omnibus diebus vite suze ignominiosé per- 
egrinando pergat.’’ We read of others who were never “to remain more 
than one night in the same place. 

At Rheims disputes and combats between the citizens, used gener- 
ally to be terminated by the sheriffs, and the most usual penalty in- 
flicted was a pilgrimage. ‘The persons condemned were to set out on a 
fixed day, and to remain in the town indicated during three, six, or 
twelve months, and to bring back authentic certificates. It was gener- 
ally a pilgrimage to St. James in Gallicia, to Tours, Toulouse, Mar- 
seilles, or Boulogne sur Mer. The two enemies were often condemned 
to travel, but in different directions, which, as Anquetil remarks, ‘‘ was 
a simple and wise method of re-establishing peace between them, for 
time and new objects, and the interposition of friends to calm the minds 
of both parties, were always sure to heal the wounds.’’+t But the pil- 
grims who chiefly demand our attention at present belong to a different 
class from these: they were men who, without having rendered them- 
selves amenable to human laws, had undertaken painful journeys in obe- 
dience to what was prescribed to them by religion, as affording the 
means of correcting vices, and of atoning in the sense required for the 
sins of their past lives. 

The palmer differed from the pilgrim in having no fixed residence, 
but spending his life in visiting holy places, at the same time professing 
voluntary poverty. Spenser, without scorn, describes the former: 

** At length they chaunst to meet upon the way 
An aged sire, in long blacke weedes yclad, 


His feete all bare, his beard all hoarie gray, 
And by his belt his booke he hanging had ; 


* Mabillon, Prefat. in ii. Secul. Benedict. § 5. + Hist. de Rheims, lib. iii. 155. 
Ss 


206 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Sober he seemede, and very sagely sad ; 

And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent, 

Simple in show, and voide of malice bad ; 

And all the way he prayed as he went, 

And often knockt his breast, as one that did repent.’”’* 

The church had introduced the custom of assigning a journey to the 
holy land as an efficacious penance; and there are not wanting even 
modern writers separated from its communion who can discern and 
point out the wisdom of what was thus recommended. ‘I know of 
nothing,” says one of these, ‘so likely to bow down a proud spirit, 
and soften it into deep and purifying thought, as a long distant jour- 
ney. ‘There is no heart proof against the solemn influence of solitude 
among strange and impressive scenes. The confidence which it has in 
itself, and in which its contempt for the future was intrenched, gradually 
gives way among them. ‘The new forms under which nature presents 
herself, are so many proofs that there is an existence and a power, of 
which, in the thoughtless uniformity of the past, it had received no 
idea, and with that new consciousness, rushes in a train of feelings, 
which, if not the same, are nearer than most others to those inspired by 
religion. For this effect of the long and often perilous journey which 
he prescribed, the priest might look with some degree of confidence; 
and no doubt experience taught him, that the hardiest of his penitents 
was not likely to come back from Syria with a mind unimpressed with 
the sentiments he wished to inspire. Other advantages also presented 
themselves in favour of this kind of penance. ‘To the natural influence 
of the journey through wild and distant countries, was added that of 
the example of many devout and enthusiastic wanderers. At every 
stage of his route, the traveller was sure to meet one or more of these 
humble palmers, either hastening to, or returning from, the holy city. 
Their humility, self-denial, and constant prayer, were powerful appeals 
to the haughty soul of the unwilling pilgrim. Generally also he was, 
by the nature of his expedition, far separated from his former compan- 
ions: for his proud knights and splendid retinue no longer followed 
him as a gay and gallant noble; and if they accompanied him, it was to 
be worshippers, like himself, at the holy tomb. He was thus led to 
form associations which materially aided the purposes for which the 
penance was imposed, and the priest knew that his instructions and 
exhortations to repentance would be repeated as many times as there 
were leagues between his parish and the sacred walls of Jerusalem. 
Nor are reasons of another kind wanted to justify the preference of pil- 
grimages over other penances. What could be more proper than to 
send him, who had broken the laws of Christ, to contemplate the scenes 
which had been hallowed by his sufferings? What could better per- 
suade to repentance, than the sight of objects which recalled to mind all 
he had done for the sake of mankind, and to bring them under the 
dominion of love and peace? The guilty violator of divine laws could 
not tread the streets of the holy city, without feeling as if the very 
stones cried out against him, to remind him, as his eyes turned towards 
the heights of Calvary, that he had ‘ crucified the Son of God afresh.’ ” 
So far this writer. But the moral advantages of this discipline were 
ere eT TY AN ARTE MOIR OL Cee 

* Fi Qi4 


AGES OF FAITH. 207 


well understood and explained with greater clearness at the time when it 
received the highest sanction. In all ages, many of those who thought 
seriously about their salvation, used at times to leave their home and 
family to have leisure to follow God, disengaged from domestic cares, 
going out of their own country like the Magi, to repair to Christ. 

We read of many saints who, by the inspiration of God, have aban- 
doned houses, and riches, and friends, to travel like pilgrims through 
strange nations, in order to serve him more at ease and freedom. In 
this conduct, they imitated not only Abraham but the apostles. They 
felt that the distractions and ties of a multitude of friends and riches, 
and worldly concerns, left them not sufficient leisure to attend to the 
interests of their souls, and the fruits of such pilgrimages were so noto- 
rious that it became a proverb. ‘‘Exeat aula qui volet esse pius.”” 

Many remarkable examples of this kind are found in the records of 
the middle age. Frodoard, in his history of the Church of Rheims, 
relates that in the time of Foulques Archbishop, who had succeeded 
Hinemar, there came into the province of Rheims, seven brothers, 
Gibrian, Helan, Tresan, Germain, Veran, Atran and Petran, with their 
three sisters, Fracia, Promptie, and Possenna, from Ireland in pil- 
grimage, for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ; and they established 
themselves each in a separate place on the banks of the river Marne. 
Gibrian, who was a priest, inhabited the village of Cosse, where he 
lived many years soberly, justly, and piously, applying himself till the 
end of his life to combat for his salvation.* In the seventh century, St. 
Giles seeing that he could not lead an obscure and retired life in his own 
country, where his piety and learning made him the object of general 
admiration, resolved to leave it to avoid the applause of men; he, there- 
fore, passed into France, and chose for his dwelling a hermitage in the 
desert, which was near the mouth of the Rhone. ‘Thence he removed 
into a place called Garde, and thence into a forest in the diocese of Nis- 
mes. The Saxon chronicle relates, that in the year 891, ‘‘three Scots 
from Ireland, came to King Alfred in a boat without any oars ; they had 
stolen away because they would live in a state of pilgrimage for the love 
of God, they recked not where. The boat in which they came was 
made of two hides and a half; and they took with them provisions for 
seven nights, and within seven nights they came to land in Cornwall, 
and soon after went to King Alfred. ‘They were named Dubslane, Mac- 
beth, and Melinman.’? From the same motives monks came from 
Rome into Ireland, being also drawn thither by the desire of a stricter 
life, or the love of sacred learning.t Bede relates of St. Hilda, ‘that 
after dedicating herself wholly to the service of God, she intended, from 
the province of the East Angles, to pass over if possible into France, 
forsaking her native country and all that she had, and there to live a 
stranger for our Lord, in the monastery of Celles, that so she might the 
more easily merit the eternal country of heaven.’’ ‘These motives were 
expressly approved of by the greatest philosophers of the middle ages. 
«¢ Change of place,”’ says St. Bonaventura, ‘‘is sometimes favourable to 
the spiritual health of novices. In changing place they change objects 
which may have led them astray. Men often become better and more 


a es er eee 2 es a eas 


* Lib. iv. cap. 9. + Monastic. Hiber. Introduc. 


208 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


perfect by leaving for a time their country and their native land.”* St, 
Jerome goes so far as to say that a monk cannot be perfect in his own 
country.t In the last book, we observed that the interests of learning 
were thought to require absence in a foreign country, and now it appears 
that a journey to Strange lands was deemed no less conducive to those 
of a spiritual nature. ‘The moderns are for placing the summit of virtue 
and happiness in domestic repose, but after all, what skills it in this 
voyage of life, to cast anchor and say to one’s bark, «* Let us rest here ; 
behold the port which is appointed to you! here you shall sleep like 
an island of the sea, which the force of the bitter waves cannot disturb! 
On the wide seas of this world there is no port, and shipwreck alone 
casts us upon the shore.”’t St. Augustine treats at large upon the social 
life, and shows to how many evils and offences it is exposed, notwith- 
Standing all the wisdom and prudence which men may bring to it;|} and 
besides, he observes, «that after the example of their respective proto- 
types, the two cities into which the whole race of men are divided, Je- 
rusalem and Babylon, are distinguished from each other by the former 
being in a state of pilgrimage, and the latter in a condition of apparent 
rest. Cain, whose name signified possession, founded a city earthly, 
having this world for its fixed resting place, established in its temporal 
peace and felicity ; but Abel, whose name denoted grief, was a stranger 
and a wanderer. Seth and Enos were named after the resurrection, and 
the hope of those who invoke God. For thus the city of God in the 
time of its pilgrimage is only sustained by hope, which arises from faith 
in the resurrection of Christ.’ These are the profound views of St. Au- 
gustine ;§ but in a lower sense, and without reference to saints who ap- 
proach perfection, it is obvious, that in a foreign country the pilgrim or 
scholar has more opportunity for recollection. Separated from former 
companions and occupations, the days of his youth come back upon 
him like a plaintive strain of harmony ; a tone of mourning pervades 
his thoughts and looks. Neither personal merit nor family connections 
avail him there: he is left alone, and has occasion to think upon God 
and on eternal truths as well as to practise humility in an eminent 
degree. Introduced to a different language and to different manners, his 
former associations are broken, and the facilities to vice are diminished : 
he can hardly be so profligate as to begin the abuse of new words and 
of new manners. Such solitude was favourable to charity. Under the 
strong religious impressions which it was calculated to produce, every 
one seemed a friend, every face was loved, every one was believed to 
be pious, and just, and innocent. In society it is hard to retain such a 
temper; hatred, suspicions, and indignation, easily enter and possess the 
heart. Travelling was a school of humility, when a great man would 
wander like Ulysses, as a poor unknown stranger. We find the son of 
Sirach testifying that he has travelled much, and exhorting others to fol- 
low his example.** 

The ancients were not ignorant of the intellectual and moral good 
which resulted from leaving home, and visiting distant countries. Py- 


ae ctorme tamer acirac en eT Ee ee TT 


* S. Bonaventure Speculum N ovitiorum, cap, 2. _ fF Epist. v. 
t De Lamartine. | De Civitate Dei, lib. xix, cap. 5. 
(§ Id. lib. xv. cap. i. 17, 18, ** Keclesiast. xxxiv. 12; xvi. 235, xxxix. 5. 


AGES OF FAITH. 209 


thagoras, we are told, finding himself loaded with gifts and occupations 
of public life by his countrymen, concluded that it was most difficult to 
sit at home and to philosophize, and remarked, «that all who had before 
him studied philosophy, had passed their lives among strangers: there- 
fore renouncing all political administration, he departed from Samos and 
repaired to Italy, where he established himself in Crotona.’’* ‘* Abdu- 
cendus est etiam,’’ says Cicero, speaking of him whose passions were 
to be corrected, ‘*nonnumquam ad alia studia, sollicitudines, curas, ne- 
gotia: loci denique mutatione, tamquam egroti non convalescentes, spe 
curandus est.”*t Sophocles introduces a king, acknowledging the bene- 
fit he has received from having been educated a foreigner in a strange 
country, where Theseus says to CEdipus, 
Ss oid Y avric, ds erraidedbuy Zévocy 
wore ov a 

And when Pythagoras returned to Samos after an absence of twelve 
years, we are told that he was received with admiration by the seniors ; 
for that he seemed to have brought home from his peregrination more 
beauty and wisdom, and greater indication of divinity.| 

With respect to the Christian pilgrimages, additional reasons would 
result in favour of them, from considering what was the particular object 
in view in their institution. The desire of visiting places, associated 
with the memory of persons dear and venerable, is a feeling of human- 
ity recognized in all ages by the universal race of men, and interwoven 
with the profoundest roots of the sentient principle of our nature. If it 
sprang from mere caprice or some particular error of any age, we should 
not find that its reasonableness could be every where and at all times 
understood, as we know that it is. When Chateaubriand was at Sparta, 
a chief of the law desired to know for what object he had come to 
Greece. Upon the interpreter replying that he had come to examine 
the ruins, the chief burst into loud laughter, and regarded him as a mad- 
man, until he added, ‘‘ that he was only passing on his pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem,’ when the other exclaimed, ‘ Kalo, kalo,’’ making no more 
questions, but seeming perfectly satisfied; for all the motives of religion 
are understood and respected every where. A striking instance of the 
intensity of this feeling is furnished by Father Bouhours, in his history 
of St. Francis Xavier, for he relates, ‘* that after the death of the saint, 
one of the Indians who had been converted by him, and who was a 
most holy Christian, not content with visiting the place of his death, 
made a journey across an immense country, and passed the seas in order 
to behold the castle of Xavier. Entering the chamber where he was 
born, he threw himself on his knees and kissed the ground and wept, 
after which, without paying attention to any thing else in Europe, he 
returned to India, considering as a great treasure, a little piece of stone 
which he had picked out of the wall of the chamber.’’§ ‘The pilgrima- 
ges to certain abbeys like Einsiedeln, or to Shrines, as that of St. Tho- 
mas at Canterbury, were themselves facts which, by attesting the truth 
of ancient prodigies thus transmitted from father to son, continually 


* Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita, cap. 5. + Tuscul. iv. { Gadip. Col. 562. 
| Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita, cap. 5. § Lib. ii. 282. 


Von. Il.—27 s2 


210 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


excited men to greater fervour. Visiting holy places also to kiss the 
spot which was darkened with the blood of martyrs, or to have a more 
lively apprehension of the great mysteries which were consummated in 
Palestine, by beholding a representation of the very places in which they 
passed, conduced, when performed with what a certain great German 
author calls ‘*the sacramental sense,’? from the enjoyment of which 
none but the race of sophists are excluded, to the experience of a kind 
of inspiration; and was an act which was known to be holy by its fruits. 
Generally, as we have already seen, the object of pilgrimages was to 
deliver men for a time from temporal cares and acquaintances, from the 
concerns of a family, and from all those solicitudes of the world which 
so engross the thoughts of men, that whatever they may pretend they 
cannot think upon God or the state of their soul, or meditate on the eter- 
nal years. It was also to give them opportunity of practising humility, 
the first step in the heavenly life, and of mortifying their bodies by 
fatigue, which of itself might overcome sensuality. ‘The very idea too 
that in going perhaps this journey of three days into the wilderness, to 
sacrifice to the Lord their God, they were also going to a place where 
thousands and millions had gone before, in circumstances like their 
own, for the sake of their souls, and where many of them had been per- 
manently converted to God, must have spoken to the heart in powerful 
language. Yet we find prudence and moderation along with the great- 
est fervour, as may be witnessed in the letter of Petrus Cellensis to the 
prior of Canterbury, where he says, ‘« My conscience accuses and excu- 
ses me for not going to the tomb of our holy Thomas, the precious mar- 
tyr of God. Tama monk, an abbot, and an old man, and as such I 
ought not to leave my cloister, nor neglect my temporal cares, but I 
should lean my staff against my fig-tree and have in mind the eternal 
years. It is pious to go, itis pious not to go. The journey is good 
which is attended with holy devotion; but the detention is religious 
which is joined with pious commemoration.’’* 

It was ungentle and unjust scorn in Milton to speak of « pilgrims that 
strayed so far to seek in Golgotha him dead, who lives in heaven;”? a 
Sentence comprising a most false testimony and a most sophistical ob- 
jection. It was well known by these men who strayed to Golgotha, 
that the only indispensable pilgrimage was that to our heavenly country, 
by the purification of the soul which might be obtained without leaving 
home. ‘* Non enim,” as St. Augustin says, ‘ad eum qui ubique pre- 
sens est locis movemur, sed bono studio bonisque moribus.”’t But yet 
in spite of Milton’s incredulity, the way, to the pilgrims, might not be in 
vain nor unfruitful. 

St. Paul desires that married persons should separate from each other 
for a time, and abandon the cares of wedded life, to give themselves to 
prayer.[ By a pilgrimage this separation was joined with prayer, and 
on this ground Wittwyler, in his history of St. Meinrod andthe pilgrim- 
age of Einsiedeln, defends the practice as beneficial and holy. But itis 
said abuses may have followed; undoubtedly it may have been so. But 
where have not abuses followed? and as Tschudi a German author re- 


a Ie ie ee 


* Petri Cellens. Epist. lib. vii. 21. ¢ De Doctrina Christiana, cap. 10. 
t 1 Corinth. vii. 5, 


AGES OF FAITH. 211 


marks, ‘that is at once the greatest abuse when men destroy what is 
good in order to prevent abuse.” ‘* There went,’’ you say, ‘‘in the 
holy throng, men of little worth, and hypocrites most vile, who looked 
for nought but gold:” God alone, it is true, knows the pilgrim, but this 
uncertainty furnished no valid ground for objection against such a prac- 
tice. The devil led our blessed Saviour into the holy city, and we need 
not marvel to find him conducting thither whom he will. “Nor,” as St. 
Augustin says, ‘ought the sheep to lay aside their clothing, because 
wolves sometimes conceal themselves in it.”* Persons, you complain, 
used to desert their families to go on pilgrimage; ‘ But,” says the his- 
torian of Einsiedeln, who wrote from experience, ‘did they not return 
better fathers, better sons, and better men? Were not the proud be- 
come humble, the weak strong, the immoral pure, and was not the tem- 
porary loss recompensed an hundred fold ?”’ 

Let it be remarked, too, that the persons who condemn the pilgrims 
are themselves wanderers, only differing from them in having no reli- 
gious motive for their way. ‘They are wanderers, like that hero of 
Paganism, who was impatient to leave the people and city of the Phe- 
cians, and yet, no sooner is he departed, than we find him crying out, 
«Ah! whither have I come! Would that I had remained there with the 
Pheecians’’— 

al dency preivak weed pauixeroty 
aurou tT 
It is not for men, the sole of whose unblessed feet can find no rest, to 
speak disdainfully of the pilgrim’s course, impelled by a reasonable 
desire, and bounded by a holy vow. Granting that the places in gen- 
eral to which he repaired may have had no recommendation in the esti- 
mation of the world, and of those who remain in it, what then? Cannot 
religion give to particular places a charm, and an importance beyond 
what commerce or pleasure canimpart? ‘‘ Men,”’ saith Pindar, * speak 
of the Island of Delos, but the gods in Olympus call it, ‘‘The far-famed 
star of the dark earth.’’? Loretto and Walsingham make but a poor 
figure in the diary of an epicurean or commercial traveller; but in what 
a tender and hallowed light are they seen by the poor? In the year 
1061, an obscure widow, inhabiting a small village, on the wild and 
tempestuous coast of Norfolk, by erecting a little chapel, resembling that 
at Nazareth, where our blessed Lady was saluted by the angel Gabriel, 
is able to impart a renown to that village which extends throughout all 
England; and such as not all the kings of the earth combined, with all 
the aid of parliaments to boot, could ever have given to it, Erasmus 
describes Walsingham in his light manner; and yet, even from his 
account, one cannot help regarding it with interest:—<‘ Not far from the 
sea,’”’ saith he, ‘‘ about four miles, there standeth a town, living almost 
of nothing else but upon the resort of pilgrims. There is a college of 
canons there, supported by their offerings. In the church is a small 
chapel, but all of wood, whereunto, on either side, at a narrow and little 
door, are such admitted as come with their devotions and offerings. 
Small light there is in it, and none other but by wax tapers, yielding a 
most dainty and pleasant smell; nay, if you look into it, you would say 


a nin a RR eT En eee 


+ Lib. ii. de Serm. Dom. in Monte, cap. 12. ¢ Od. xiii. 204. 


212 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


it was the habitation of heavenly saints, indeed, so bright shining it is 
all over with precious stones, with gold and silver.”’ Camden men- 
tions, that princes have repaired to this chapel, walking thither bare- 
foot. ‘These places are now plundered, overthrown, and stigmatiz- 
ed, as the proper objects of scorn to men of intelligence ; but is it just 
to prevent the poor from making their innocent journey to a cross,—to 
some spot, known in their annals as the far-famed star of the dark 
earth,—while such immense sums are squandered upon voyages of mere 
pleasure, to visit springs of mineral water, and brilliant cities, through 
idleness and vanity ? Why are the pious to be condemned for secking 
holy places for the sake of edification, in order that the visible and tem. 
poral may be made the means for them to gain eternity ? 

To the great Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln, it was the custom 
every year for whole parishes of Switzerland to repair, in solemn pro- 
cession, with cross and banners: vast numbers of nobles and princes 
also used to make this pilgrimage. More collected or saintly looks I 
never beheld than in the pilgrims whom I met along the roads leading 
to it. In the year 1826, there were, among these pilgrims, one hundred 
and fifty thousand communicants, which only exceeded by a small num- 
ber the average amount every year. Pilgrims, before setting out to visit 
holy places, were enjoined to hear mass, in which was to be said the 
prayer for travellers; and, at the end, the Roman ritual prescribed vari- 
ous psalms and prayers, which the priest was to repeat, in reference to 
them. In like manner, on their return, they were to receive a benedic- 
tion, the form of which may be seen in the ritual. Of the ardour for 
visiting the holy land in ages of faith, there are on record many affecting 
instances. Raymond, a young man of Placentia, having been early 
impressed with a veneration for the pious pilgrims who passed through 
his native city, fell into a profound melancholy, of which no one could 
discover the cause; at last, persuaded into a confession by the bitter grief 
of his affectionate mother, he told her that his mourning originated in 
his earnest desire to visit Palestine. He had concealed his desire till 
now, from the fear of afflicting her; but, instead of being grieved, as he 
had expected, she regarded him, for a time, with silent joy, and then 
embraced him, saying, «I am a widow, and I may imitate the example 
of St. Anne, who, in her widowhood, quitted not the temple of Jerusa- 
lem, neither day nor night.” Having then informed her son that she 
was resolved to accompany him on his holy journey, they immediately 
made their preparations. Previous to their departure, they received the 
episcopal blessing from the holy prelate of Placentia, who placed a red 
cross upon their breasts, and begged them to remember their country 
during their meritorious engagement, and to pray that it might be pre- 
served during the calamities with which it seemed threatened by signs 
from heaven. They then took up their staff and scrip, and set out on 
their journey, accompanied, for a short distance, by their friends and 
neighbours. Nothing remarkable befell them on the way; but when 
they came in sight of Jerusalem, they are described as weeping at the 
remembrance of the sufferings of the Lord of Life. ‘Their devotion, on 
approaching the holy sepulchre, was still more vividly excited; and as 
they knelt, pouring out their souls at the foot of the cross, they passion- 
ately desired that they might die there, where the Saviour himself had 


AGES OF FAITH. 213 


poured out his blood. Having visited the other sacred objects in Jerusa- 
lem and its neighbourhood, they set sail for their native land; but scarce- 
ly were they embarked, when Raymond fell sick of a dangerous mala- 
dy, but he soon recovered, and they arrived safely at land. No sooner, 
however, were they thus near the completion of their long journey, than 
the fond mother was seized with a fatal illness, and expired in the arms 
of her son, spending her last breath in blessing him, and exhorting him 
to pursue a life of virtue and piety. Buta far more memorable example 
is furnished by St. Jerome, in his immortal letters, describing the pilgrim- 
age of St. Paula :—*‘ Before setting out, she divided all that she possessed 
among her children; then she embarked, weeping, and afraid to turn her 
eyes towards the dear objects that she was to leave for ever. She 
touched at the isle of Pontia, celebrated by the exile of Flavia Domitilla, 
who generously confessed Christ in the persecution of Diocletian. She 
visited-with respect the modest retreat, where this holy lady spent the 
long years of her martyrdom; but all her wishes were fixed upon arriving 
at Jerusalem, whither she hastened on the wings of faith. She passed 
between Charybdis and Scylla, in the Adriatic, and was obliged to stop 
at Mithon, to repair her exhausted strength. Thence she arrived, suc- 
cessively, at Cythera, at the promontory of Malea, at Rhodes, and at the 
island of Cyprus, where she had the consolation to find the holy Bishop 
Epiphanius, who retained her with him for ten days, which she em- 
ployed to the glory of God, in visiting the numerous monasteries which 
covered this island, and every where she left abundant alms to the mul- 
titude of holy personages, whom the renown of the illustrious prelate 
had drawn together from all parts of the world. From thence she passed 
to Seleucia and to Antioch, where the Bishop Paulin detained her for 
some time. ‘Thence she made a painful journey, during the depth of 
winter, through Phenicia and Syria. Arrived at the tower of Elias, on 
the banks of the Sarepta, she addressed her prayers to our Saviour Jesus 
Christ, and traversed the sands of Tyre. ‘Thence she passed to Cotti, 
which is now called Ptolemaide, where she entered the country of the 
Philistines. She saw the celebrated tower of Straton, and the house of 
that Cornelius who is mentioned in St. Paul’s Epistles, which is now a 
church. She passed through Lydda, where Dorcas and Enea were 
raised to life by St. Peter and St. Paul. ‘Then she saw the tower of 
Arimathea, to which belonged Joseph, who buried our Lord. Thence 
she passed by Emmaus, which is now called Nicopolis. Here the house 
of Cleophas is still shown: it is changed intoachurch. Paula remained 
some time at Gabaon. Thence, leaving on the left the sepulchre of He- 
lena, she entered Jerusalem. Now she gave proof of her great humil- 
ity ; for, as the proconsul of Palestine, who knew the family of the no- 
ble lady, had prepared an apartment for her in the Pretorian palace, she 
would have no other lodging but a little humble cell. Without taking 
any rest, she began to visit the holy places, with such an ardent piety, 
that, without the desire which pressed her to go to prostrate herself in 
those she had not as yet seen, she could not turn herself away from 
those which she beheld. O what tears did she pour forth at the foot of 
the cross and in the holy sepulchre! I call to witness the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem who were present. She then visited the citadel of Sion, and 
the place where the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles. After 


214 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


distributing all that remained to her between her servants and the poor, 
she departed at last for Bethlehem. She went a little out of her way to 
see the sepulchre of Rachel. Arriving at Bethlehem, and entering into 
the grotto, she contemplated the holy asylum of the queen of virgins. 
There I heard her say that, with the eyes of faith, she saw the divine 
infant, and the magi adoring, and the Virgin Mother, and the shepherds 
hastening to behold the Word made flesh. In the joy which accompan- 
ied her holy tears, she cried, ‘ Hail, Bethlehem, so worthy of thy name ; 
House of Bread! where the Bread of Heaven deigned to descend for us. 
Ah! how is it possible that I, wretched sinner, should be found worthy 
to kiss this cradle, to pray in this cave, where the Virgin Mother depos- 
ited her Divine fruit? ‘This shall be the place of my rest, since it is the 
country of my God; here will I dwell, since my God did not disdain to 
be born here: here will I give myself to that God who gave himself up 
for me.’ Descending then to the tower of Ader, she saw the place where 
Jacob fed his flocks, and where the shepherds heard the angels singing, 
‘Gloria in excelsis Deo.’ ‘Thence she passed to Gaza and Bethsura, 
and to the house of Sara: she saw the cradle of Isaac, and the oak of 
Abraham, ‘Then she passed to Chebron, called Cariath, that is, the 
town of the four men, because it was supposed to contain the tombs of 
Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and Adam. On the following day, at the rising 
of the sun, she stopped on the summit of Caphar Baruccha, whence she 
beheld the vast solitude, where once stood the cities of Sodom and Go- 
morrah. But I return with the illustrious traveller to Jerusalem. Paula 
visited the tomb of Lazarus: the house where dwelt Mary Magdalen and 
Martha. She then went to Jericho; and on the way thought of the good 
Samaritan. She stopped at the place where the blind received their 
sight. The next day, soon after midnight, she travelled to the banks 
of the Jordan; and as the first rays of the sun gilded its banks, she 
reflected on that Son of Justice which there began his divine mission. 
She contemplated with veneration the tombs of Joshua, and of Eliezer, 
son of Aaron; and she could not sufficiently admire this latter, which is 
at Gaban, in the territory of his family, because, being charged with the 
division of the conquered land, he had kept for his own part the country 
which was the most scorched and barren. She then visited Silo and 
Sichem. She entered a church, which has been built on the side of the 
mountain of Garezim, over the well of the patriarch Jacob, where our 
Saviour sat with the woman of Samaria. Thence she went to view 
the tombs of the twelve patriarchs. Weak as she was, she mounted on 
foot to the summit of the celebrated mountain where the prophet Abdias 
retired with the hundred prophets in time of persecution, living in cav- 
erns, and feeding upon bread and water. ‘Thence she went to Nazareth, 
to Chanaan and Capharnaum. She saw the Lake of Tiberiad, sanctified 
by the honour of having borne the Lord in his navigations, and the des- 
ert where he fed the multitude. From the top of Mount Thabor she 
discovered the mountains of Hermon and Hermonium, and the vast 
plains of Galilee. She was pointed out the city of Nain, where the 
widow’s son was raised; but time would fail me to describe all the places 
which the venerable Paula was prompted to visit by piety and faith. I 
pass, therefore, at once into Egypt, where she visited the church which 
is built over the tomb of the prophet Micah. Then passing over the im- 


AGES OF FAITH. 215 


mense sands of the desert, where she had nothing to guide her but the 
print of steps, almost effaced, of the travellers who had preceded her in 
that perilous way, she arrived at the river Seor, and the plains of ‘Tanis. 
hence she passed to the city of No, which is now called Alexandria. 
She then visited Nitria, which had just recently embraced the faith of 
Christ. The bishop of this city, named Isidore, who had had the honour 
to confess his religion generously during a persecution, came out to meet 
her with a crowd of monks, many of whom were priests. At the sight 
of so many eminent personages, she rejoiced in the glory of the Lord, 
acknowledging herself unworthy of the honours there showed to her. 
Then it was that she became acquainted with the Macaires, the Arsetuses, 
the Serapions, and the crowd of other saints, who were the glory of Christ 
in these countries. She visited the holy solitaries with respect, and pros- 
trated herself humbly at the feet of each of them. In the least of these 
servants of God, she thought she beheld God : and it seemed to her that 
the honours she rendered to them were rendered to Christ, whose image 
they were to her eyes. O, wonderful ardour! O courage ! almost incred- 
ible in a woman, Paula would have wished to have passed the remain- 
der of her days with them, subject to their austere rule, if she had not 
been recalled to Palestine; so, embarking at Pelusa, she passed to Ma- 
gunia, and thence returned to Bethlehem; where, for the first three 
years, she inhabited a small house, until a monastery with cells had been 
constructed by her orders. There, by the way-side, she built an hos- 
pital, which was always open to poor travellers in the very place where 
Joseph and Mary had found no asylum. Here ended her travels; and 
from this period (adds St. Jerome) 1 shall confine myself to describe the 
progress which she continued to make in virtue.’”* 

The motives for visiting the holy land, as has been admitted by mod- 
ern writers, were reasonable and holy; and that Rome should have been 
another place to which pilgrims, from every part of the world were di- 
rected, can excite no surprise, when we consider the religious interest 
attached to that venerable city, and the indulgences which were extend- 
ed to those who visited it with a devout intention. We find repeated 
mention of the pilgrimages to Rome in the Saxon Chronicle ; Ina, king 
of Wessex, who founded the monastery of Glastonbury, afterwards went 
to Rome, and continued there to the end of his life. Again, in the year 
709, we read that Cenred went to Rome, and Offa with him; and Cen- 
red was there to the end of his life. Alfred sent pilgrims to Rome: for 
kings used often to send pilgrims thither, and to Jerusalem, paying their 
expenses, as we see in the testament of René, King of Sicily, so late as 
in the year 1474.¢ On their return such pilgrims always carried their 
palms at the procession. 

In the remarkable letter which Canute addressed to the bishops and 
nation of England, he describes, in simple and affecting language, the 
motives which induced him to make a pilgrimage to Rome: and it is 
interesting to observe how precisely similar they were to those, which 
still actuate every devout Catholic who repairs thither. Independent of 
the advantage resulting to the traveller himself, there were reasons to 
recommend the custom of this particular pilgrimage to the judgment 


* S, Hieron. Epist. ad Eustoch. + Mem. de Comines, Preuves. 


216 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


even of those who were politically wise: for, as Spedalieri shows, the 
Christian pilgrims meeting together in Rome from every country, 
brought back to their own land a kind of practical and personal convic- 
tion of all being children of one mother, so that afterwards every one 
felt within himself an additional motive for desiring to avert discord, and 
whatever might interrupt the concord of the common family .* 

To estimate justly the disposition of the pilgrim’s mind, we should 
consider what were the difficulties to be encountered on a journey, in 
the middle age, even, as Thucydides says, ‘‘ by a well-girded man.” It 
is true, nothing was then more common than travelling. Whata great 
traveller was St. Bernard! and how many journeys did even a St. 
Theresa make for objects connected with the different establishments 
which she founded throughout Spain! We find no trace, indeed, of 
men and families abandoning their native land to travel over the world, 
through the vanity of that knight in Ariosto, who has squandered his 
estate, and of whom we are told, 


“Ruined, at length he thinks he will be gone 
To other country, where he is unknown.” 


We have seen that some travelled in order to conceal their virtues, 
not their vices; but chivalry and the scholastic life corresponded with 
devotion in suggesting the advantages of travelling, like Homer, to dis- 
tant nations, to study, not alone the manners, but also the laws, customs, 
and institutions, which prevailed in different places; and the influence 
of the Catholic religion, far more than the wisdom of some of the an- 
cient sages, tended to overthrow those barriers, which national jealous- 
ies and pride have so often, and in so many countries, interposed 
between the mutual intercourse of men. As with the Dorians, who pro- 
hibited travelling, and excluded all foreigners, through an anxiety to keep 
up their national character and customs, and particularly as, under the 
laws of Zaleucus, who made it death to leave one’s country for another. 
Christine de Pisan deems it greatly in praise of Louis de Bourbon, 
fourth brother of King Charles V. that he was a great traveller: ‘* Moult 
a voyagé et esté en maintes bonnes et honnorables places.’’t George 
Chastellain could boast, in like manner, that he had travelled in France, 
Spain, England, and Italy ; and the poet Ronsard, that he had devoted 
a long time to this employment. 


“J ay long temps voyagé en ma tendre jeunesse 
Desireux de loiiange, ennemi de paresse.”’{ 


It was during his travels in Germany and his visits to all the great 
courts of Europe, that the noble and learned Spaniard, Don Diego 
Savedra Faxardo, collected the materials for his admirable work on the 
Institutions of a Christian Prince. Like him described by Dante, noth- 
ing could overcome, in the ardent spirits of the middle age, the zeal they 
had to explore the world, and search the ways of life, man’s evil and 
his virtue.|| Homer is represented saying, that he prefers wandering to 
remaining in the sacred streets of Cyme: 


a a ee a rt cre EE nn I OE ee eee 


* De diritti dell ’uomo, lib. v. 5. + Livre des fais, &c. ii. chap. 14. 
t Gouget, tom, xii. 225. } Hell, xxvi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 217 


Méyas dé pus Gupeccs exretyet 
Simov eo Garcdasiv eves oatyov sep covree.* 

Petrarch, in a letter to Andrew Dondolo, doge of Venice, apologizes 
for his own wandering life, and says, ‘‘ Heroes, philosophers, and apos- 
tles, have led the same.”” He might have added, that the noblest works 
of human genius denote clearly that their authors were pilgrims and 
Strangers upon earth. Chateaubriand defends the plan of his Martyrs 
from those who condemned it as being only that of a journey, by observ- 
ing that the Odyssey is nothing but a journey; that the Awneid, the 
Lusiad of Camoens, the Jerusalem of ‘T'asso, and the Telemachus of 
Fenelon, are also journeys, or chiefly composed of journeys. But 
there was still a higher consideration which moved men in the middle 
ages in favour of travelling,—for they remarked, that the life of our 
Divine Master was like a continual journey and pilgrimage. Consider 
how often he and his blessed mother travelled, beginning with that jour- 
ney from Nazareth to the mountains of Judea, which, with the return, 
was a distance of twice ninety-five miles. Then there was the journey 
from Nazareth to Bethlehem of Judea, which was ninety-six miles ; 
from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, with the return, which was twelve miles ; 
from Bethlehem into Egypt, which was about three hundred miles, and 
back again to Nazareth: from Nazareth to Jerusalem, which was ninety 
miles, and back again; from Nazareth to the Jordan, which was ninety- 
two miles. From thence to the desert, five; from the desert to Beth- 
any, fifteen; from thence to Cana in Galilee, ninety-four; thence to 
Capernaum, forty-five; thence to Jerusalem, one hundred and twelve; 
thence to Bethbesen on the Jordan, twenty-five; thence to Sichar in 
Samaria, forty-four; thence to Cana, fifty; thence to Bethsaida, forty- 
seven; thence to Capernaum, six; thence to the Gessarenet, with the 
return, which was ten; thence to Jerusalem, one hundred and twelve; 
thence to the Lake of Genesareth, one hundred and six; thence to Cap- 
ernaum, six; thence to Nain, with the return, which was one hundred 
miles. Thence to Nazareth, forty-seven; thence to Sephoris, fifteen ; 
thence to Capernaum, fifty; thence to Corozaim, with the return, six- 
teen; thence to the confines of Tyre, fifty-five; thence to Sidon, twen- 
ty-five; thence to Capernaum, fifty-five; thence to Dalmanutha, five ; 
thence to Bethsaida, five; thence to Casarea-Philippi, thirty-eight ; 
thence to Mount Thabor, fifty-eight; thence to Capernaum, forty-five ; 
thence to Jerusalem, with the return, which was two hundred and twen- 
ty-four; thence to Bethabara, on the J ordan, thirty-six; thence to 
Jerusalem by a circuit of one hundred and twelve miles; thence to 
Bethany, twenty-three ; thence to Ephrem, twenty ; thence to Jericho, 
sixteen; thence to Bethany, twenty; thence to Jerusalem and back to 
Bethany. Then twice again from Bethany to Jerusalem, with the re- 
turn thither. And lastly, the final return to Jerusalem.t 

In the middle ages, the manner even of ordinary travelling had many 
advantages. Young nobles, of high houses, would then make their 
way on foot ‘in forma pauperis,’’ with peasant’s shoes and staff in 
hand. Thus would they foster habits of simplicity and endurance, and 
that amiable taste for the beauties of nature, which is so closely allied to 
a ae eee es ee ee ee ee hl 

* Epig. iv. + Voyages de Jesus Christ. 

Vor. I].—28 


218 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


many virtues. What delightful recollections were in store for him who 
used to rise before the sun, in order to find a more refreshing bed 
amidst the salt-sea billows of the Mediterranean, where, from amidst 
them, he would observe, thrown against the blushing sky, the dark and 
stately form of the pines, which line the rocky shore,—for him who 
used to wander beneath the marble steeps of Chiavera, or through the for- 
ests, on the shore of Chiassi, listening to the gathering melody which 
rolls from branch to branch, when Eolus hath loosed from his cavern 
the dripping south? What joy would fill his breast, when he beheld 
the snow-topt Apennines, like golden clouds, amidst the radiance of the 
rising sun; and below, far in the distance, for the first time, Soracte, 
and the ‘Tiber, who first unlocks near there his mighty flood, as they ap- 
pear to him who descends the Mount Ciminus, journeying on his way 
through Ronciglione to the eternal city! What a sweet, fond theme 
afterwards, for such as loved him, to hear of his ** moving accidents by 
flood and field, his hair-breadth ’scapes, and most disastrous chances 
that his youth had suffered.’”’ In the middle ages, even this rambling 
assumed a religious character. Along with their student and castle 
songs, dbex tpyav veorégav, as Pindar says,* these young wanderers could 
all sweeten their thoughtful hours with repeating some hymn of holy 
Church, corresponding with their state. He who was first risen would 
leave the town before his company, and, as he passed along the shore 
of the placid sea, spread out, in calm majesty, like the floor of a mighty 
temple, when already the rising sun darted his beams, and with his 
arrowy radiance, gave fearful note of provision for the ensuing hours, 
he would think of the dangers that might befall him during the meridian 
heat; he would be reminded cf the flames of anger and the sins of an 
impatient tongue, and then he would repeat, with audible voice, the 
primal hymn, which prays to God, at the rising of the star of day, 


‘¢ Linguam refrenans temperet 
Ne litis horror insonet.” 


It is not a mere picture of the imagination which ascribes such man- 
ners to the common traveller. In a later age the Chancellor D’Aguesau 
mentions, that when his father and mother used to travel, they always 
began by reciting the prayers of travellers, which are in the holy book 
of Priests. 

The scenes of life too with which travelling generally familiarised 
men, conduced to the formation of a noble and thoughtful character. 
They were not led by it to associate with the wretched godless crew, 
which, in our own time, is annually discharged upon all the roads of 
Europe, from the pestilential dens of London or Paris. In general, a 
modern traveller is only transported from city to city, and from inn to 
inn, where the same atmosphere, the same dissipation, the same dis- 
course, the same faces, accompany him: he is escorted frequently by 
atheists and epicures, as if by demons— 


“¢ Ah, fearful company! but in the Church 
With saints, with gluttons at the tavern’s mess.’ 


A wanderer in the middle ages, like Dante, might be traced, in his 


* Olymp. ix. + Dante, Hell, xxii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 219 


devious course, to an assembly in the sacristy of some Church, or to 
some knightly castle among the mountains, or to a chamber in some 
monastery, in a wild and solitary region, or to a tower of some lord 
near a river, or to a rock adjoining some castle, on which he used to sit, 
or to a palace of some splendid patron of learned men, or to some 
banquet hall in the house of some illustrious senator. ‘These journeys 
had even occasionally the character of a pilgrimage. Peruthgarius, son 
of Theobald, attached to the court of Count Gerald, being despatched 
on a journey by that nobleman, and coming near the Church of the 
Martyrs, in the town of Kentibrut.in Thurgau, was admonished by his 
page, who here showed himself no Pythagorean, to turn aside a little 
from the road, for the sake of prayer.* Express and avowed pilgrim- 
ages were, however, many of the journeys of the lay nobility. In the 
Mortuary Hall on the dead body of the knight which was there exposed, 
used always to be placed his sword and the staff of pilgrimage, which 
he had borne to different places during his life.t 

Thus far there might seem to be no reason for concluding that the life 
of a traveller, in the middle ages, had any connection with the character 
of mourners; but if we consider it with more attention, we shall find 
that not only, like other occupations of men, it was mixed with joy and 
sorrow, but that the latter must have predominated at least with the 
greater part of those who engaged in it. Young men, indeed, may have 
always rejoiced at the prospect of undertaking a perilous journey, 
through the same spirit which made the Athenian youth so eager to sail 
for Sicily : «the desire of seeing distant lands,”? «2# etarides ovres cwSicer Sat, 
as Thucydides says.{ No sooner returned than they may have been 
ready to second the proposal of Laertes: ‘* My thoughts and wishes 
bend again towards France.” But no such spirit or encouragement can 
we ascribe to the pilgrim who left his home and country through peni- 
tence and who was often of advanced years, and already bowed down 
with the weight of calamity. ‘In the age of the Crusades,” says 
Bonald, ‘‘ men endeavoured to expiate crimes which were easy to com- 
mit, by virtues which were painful to practise.’’|| We must remember 
‘that, after all, the feudal life was especially domestic and sedentary. 
Long voyages, by men of mature age, were rare, and under all circum- 
stances, painful and difficult. A journey from one province to another 
was a great enterprise. Hénault relates, that the monks of Saint Maur- 
des-Fossés, near Paris, excused themselves from going into Burgundy, 
‘on account of the length and dangers of the journey.” ‘Thomas 
Poucyn, elected Abbot of Canterbury in the year 1334, travelling to 
Avignon to receive the Pope’s benediction, arrived there after a journey 
of three weeks and three days, of which the expenses came to the sum 
of twenty-one pounds eighteen shillings. Frequently men had to travel 
over lands without a road, and through a people speaking a multitude of 
different idioms. It was not till the thirteenth century that some inns 
began to be found in Italy. Hence, before going on a journey, men 
went to confession. Thus Alcuin writes to Dametas: ‘‘ Make safe your 
journey by confession, and remember to guard it by alms.’’§ St. An- 


ee eer ee er enriEsanEraTAE UE UEEEESSERRIRNEIRIEIS 2 aE 9 RTE TEE LT 


* Mabillon, Acta Ord. S. Bened. Sac. iv. 5. + Tristan, tom. v. 134, 
} Lib. vi. 24. || Legislation Primitive, iii. 275. § Alcuini Epist. xlvi. 


220 MORES CATHOLICI; or, 


selm writes in like manner to his brother, Burgundius, who was going 
to Jerusalem: ‘I advise and entreat you not to carry your sins with 
you, but get rid of them effectually by a general and exact confession 
of all your offences from your youth.’’* Since thou hast far to go, bear 
not along the clogging burden of a guilty soul. 

Abbot Rodulf, in the beginning of the twelfth century, describes his 
journey across those Alps, which saw pass, in the eleventh, that terrible 
red flag of the children of Rollo, which was to put to flight the eagles 
of the eastern empire. It was in winter, on his return from Rome, and 
scarcely, he says, was the suffering endurable by the human body. 
‘‘ We were detained at the foot of the Mount Jove,t in a village called 
Restopolis, from which we could neither advance nor retreat in conse- 
quence of the quantity of snow which had fallen. At length ‘the Ma- 
roniers,’ or guides, conducted us as far as St. Remi, which is on the 
Same mountain, where we found a vast multitude of travellers ; and 
where we were in danger of death from the repeated falls of whole 
tracts of snow from the rocks above us. We remained some days in 
this unhappy village, till at length the guides said that they would lead 
on, but demanded a heavy price. Their heads and hands were guarded 
with skins and fur, and their shoes armed with iron nails, to prevent 
them from slipping on the ice, and they carried long spears in their 
hands, to feel their way along over the snow. It was very early in the 
morning, and with great fear and trembling the travellers celebrated and 
received the holy mysteries, as if preparing themselves for death. They 
contended with each other who should first make his confession; and 
since one priest did not suffice, they went about the Church confessing 
their sins to each other. While these things were passing within the 
Church with great devotion, there was a lamentable shout heard in the 
street—for the guides who had left the town to clear the way, were sud- 
denly buried under a great fall of the snow, as if under a mountain. 
The people ran to save them, and pulled them out,—some dead, some 
but half alive, others with broken limbs. Upon this, we all returned to 
Restopolis, where we passed the Epiphany. Upon the weather clear- 
ing, we again set out, and succeeded happily in passing the profane 
mount of Jove.’’t 

In these holy pilgrims, the spirit of self-denial and mortification was 
continually put to the test. St. Aderal of Troyes, in the tenth century, 
made twelve pilgrimages to Rome in honour of the apostles, travelling 
the entire way on foot: and once being obliged to pass a swollen river, 
he boldly entered the torrent, and swam across. He passed the Apen- 
nines in a season of intense cold, barefooted, that he micht suffer some- 
thing for Jesus Christ, and each time that he crossed the Alps, he beat 
the rocks with bare feet.|| One of the old chronicles, relating the cru- 
sade of Frederic Barbarossa, says, that to paint the sufferings and the 
heroic resignation of the crusaders, would require the tongue of an angel. 
Such pilgrims did not resemble these modern travellers, who would all 
follow Hercules to the infernal regions in search of the poets, but, like 


on a OI RE OE SOE) OER 


* S. Anselmi Epist. lib. iii. 66. t Great St. Bernard. 
t Chronic. Abbatia S. Trudonis, lib. xii. p. 496, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. vii. 
| Desguerrois, Hist. du Diocése de Troyes, 250. 


AGES OF FAITH. 221 


Bacchus, taking especial care to bargain for a way that was neither too 
hot nor too cold.* 'Their’s was a way over the cold Alp, the nurse of 
snows through all the year, and through scorching deserts, where every 
shape of painful death surrounded them. Nicephorus relates that Eva- 
grius came to Macarius the Anchorite, about the meridian hour, asking 
for some cold water, being quite exhausted with the heat and fatigue, to 
whom Macarius placidly replied, ‘‘ My son, be content with the shade ; 
for many travellers and navigators are this moment wanting it.’’t 

Nor were sufferings wanting even in nearer lands. Many a pilgrim 
to Camaldoli might mourn while traversing those desolate scorched hills 
of broken earth, where wretched peasants spread before the sun, to be 
dried on the slaty bed of torrents, the little corn yielded by that ungra- 
cious soil. Hastening on their way to invoke God at the shrines of 
saints, these poor pilgrims would come to rivers, where they would 
have to give their last loaf to be transported across, having nothing else 
left to offer.t When a noble left his ancestral hall on a pilgrimage to 
the Holy Land, if he had enemies they might rejoice, and say, like the 
suitors of Penelope, when they heard that Telemachus was setting out, 
‘‘ that he went to perish far from his friends, wandering alone like his 
father.’’ ‘They might indulge such a hope; for there were not wanting 
grounds to make it highly probable that it would be realized. William, 
Duke of Guyenne, was a proud violent prince, abandoned to all kinds 
of profligacy, and so haughty, that he seemed to look down upon the 
greatest nobles. He chose to recognise the antipope Anaclet, notwith- 
standing the efforts of St. Bernard and of the Bishop of Soissons, who 
in vain endeavoured to draw him from the schism. St. Bernard after 
retiring for some time to his Abbey of Chateliers, wrote from there to 
the duke, ordering him to come to him. Though this letter was little 
respectful in appearance, it produced the effect intended. The duke, 
immediately on receiving it, set out for the abbey, where the saint, after 
receiving him with all the honours due to his rank, proceeded to remon- 
strate with him without sparing him, speaking to him, during the seven 
days that he retained him, with such force, of death, the last judgment, 
and the pains of hell, that William appeared touched to the quick, and 
departed in the best dispositions. After some relapses, he was at length 
finally converted to a holy life. So, after making a devout testament, 
he resolved to set out on a pilgrimage to Compostella: and in such 
obscurity did he travel, that, after leaving his states, he was never more 
heard of. Suger supposed that he died on the road. All that is known 
for certain respecting him is, that, after traversing Biscay and the north 
of Castille, he reached the city of Leon; but beyond that, all was con- 
jecture. The general opinion was, that God took him to himself to- 
wards the end of the first Lent of his pilgrimage, and that he received 
the viaticum on Good Friday. Many were the pilgrims who thus per- 
ished without ever having seen the day of return, the viortzov iuep, or 
without any thing having been ever heard of the manner, or place, or 
time of their death. 

If Eurylochus, in Homer, departed weeping, though along with two 


* Aristoph. Rane, 119. ft Lib. xi. c. 48, Hist. Eccles. 
+ Mabillon, Acta Ordinis S. Bened. See. iv. 5, 


T2 


222 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and twenty companions, how must he have mourned, who had to set 
out, through unknown ways, alone! The sign of mourners was even 
prescribed to be worn by those who had charge of receiving the pil- 
grims, as at Paris in the Hospital of St. Jaques-du-haut-Pas, founded 
by Galligus, guardian of another house of the same order in Italy ; for 
there the members were enjoined to wear the sign of ‘Tau woven upon 
their breasts. Well, then, might one of these pilgrims hear words of 
affection addressed him on his departure like those which were directed 
to retain Telemachus. ‘‘ Dear child! what hath filled your mind with 
this desire? Wherefore, beloved, do you wish to go alone over much 
of the earth? 


bevetk TrOAAHY EE yetlay 

fecuvos guy, * 
Remain at home and enjoy what you possess. There is no necessity 
for you to suffer evils on the cruel sea, or to wander thus 


cud TL TE XEN 
movTey er arevyerov nana marvew oud” ddarnodas.” 
His reply, if made, as it well might be, in the Virgilian line, would 
not seem to deny the justice of ranking him as a mourner.— 


‘ Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta 
Jam sua: nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur,’’> 


We read in the Life of Lietbertus, Bishop of Cambray, that when 
that holy bishop had resolved upon making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 
in the year 1054, setting out from his city of Cambray, he was accom- 
panied for three miles by a multitude of people of both sexes and of all 
ages, who took leave of him with sighs and tears.{ 

Those who remember with what horror a sea voyage was contem- 
plated during the middle ages by the greatest part of those who travelled 
through devotion, can easily appreciate the degree of constancy which 
they must have possessed to undertake it. Perfectly in the style of 
Homer was their constant exclamation, 

cic 0” dy say torcovde dradeauot arpugoy idwp 
aOTETOY 5 

When the king St. Louis and his host had embarked at Marseilles, 
Joinville describes how the priests and clerks came upon the deck, and 
‘‘ began, with all the ship’s company, to sing aloud the ‘ Veni Creator 
Spiritus.’ Then the sailors, while singing, spread out the sails in the 
name of God, and the wind soon filling them, we began to make way, 
and soon lost sight of land, and saw only the water and the sky. ‘Et 
par ce veulx-je bien dire, (continues the brave Joinville) que icelui est 
bien fol, qui sceut avoir aucune chose de l’autrui, et quelque péché mor- 
tel en son ame, et se boute en tel dangier. Car si on s’endort au soir, 
l’on ne scest si on se trouvera au matin au sous de la mer.’”’? Undoubt- 
edly the pilgrim who returned from Jerusalem, or from some other dis- 
tant land, bearing his branch of palm, and then placing it as an offering 
on the altar of the Church of his home, coming back alone after wan- 


* Odyssey, ii. 363. + Mneid, lib. iii. 493. 
+ Vita Lietberti, Episc. Cameracensis, cap. 31, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. ix. 


AGES OF FAITH. 223 


dering for ten years, like Telemachus, or perhaps for twenty, like his 
great father, suffering many woes, might now with good reason have 
been felicitated as a man peculiarly favoured, to whom it was not 
destined, as Mercury says to Calypso of Ulysses, to perish far from 
his companions, but to whom it was still reserved to see once more 
his friends, and to come to his lofty-battlemented house, and to his 
fatherland.* Guizot, in affirming that the crusades could have invol- 
ved the chivalry of Europe in no painful service, because they re- 
quired no change of life from men who were always roving, seems 
to forget the express testimony of history to the mourning and afflic- 
tion of the crusaders in leaving their homes for these expeditions, 
which they undertook as a work meritorious.—Thus we behold one 
of them only persuaded after a long conversation with St. Bernard, 
who speaks to him on the passion of Christ, till, dissolved in a flood 
of tears, he conquers his preference of house and land, and resolves 
to take up the cross. Joinville, in quitting his home, cannot endure 
the sight of his ancestral towers, and so keeps his face turned from 
them. 

But among the instances on record of the penitential spirit in which 
many of the crusaders departed for the Holy Land, there is none more 
striking than that of William, Count of Poitiers, who speaks as follows, 
before setting out for Palestine; ‘*I wish to compose a chant, and the 
subject shall be that which causes my sorrow. I go into exile beyond 
sea, and I leave my beloved Poitiers and Limousin. I go beyond sea 
to the place where pilgrims implore their pardon. Adieu, brilliant tour- 
naments ! adieu, grandeur and magnificence, and all that is dear to my 
heart! Nothing can stop me. I go to the plains where God promises 
remission of sins. Pardon me, all you my companions, if I have ever 
offended you. LI implore your pardon. I offer my repentance to Jesus, 
the master of heaven; to him I address my prayer. ‘Too long have I 
been abandoned to worldly distractions ; but the voice of the Lord has 
been heard. We must appear before his tribunal. I sink under the 
weight of my iniquities.”’ 

I am not ignorant, indeed, with what bitter scorn and insulting cen- 
sure the modern writers speak of the influence which occasioned this 
wondrous progress of nations to the East; but neither am I in doubt 
respecting their unreasonableness in so doing. Pope Urban II. in the 
Council of Claremont, conceding the indulgence to all who should 
join the enterprise which was to deliver Jerusalem from the yoke of 
the Saracens, made this provision, which is read in the second canon : 
‘*Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adep- 
tione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem profectus fuerit, iter illud 
pro omni peenitentia ei reputetur.”—** Can one conceive, (asks Gui- 
zot,) that at present a people of proprietors would all of a sudden 
abandon their property and family, and leave their homes, without an 
absolute necessity, to seek such distant adventures? Nothing of this 
kind (he adds) would have been possible, had not the daily life of the 
possessors of fiefs been a kind of training for the crusades.’’t Nor 
would it have been possible then, he might have added, if religion 


* Hom. Od, v. 114. ¢ Discours sur PHist. Mod. tom. iv. 5. 


224 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


had not imparted a sanctity to mourning, and taught men to embrace 
such sufferings as meritorious. Besides, without taking into account 
what this author had elsewhere admitted, that the feudal life was favour- 
able to domestic habits, and to the importance of women, it is a manifest 
truth, that by a law of nature and the very constitution of the human 
mind, men in general, with the exception of certain peculiar tribes, must 
in every age be similarly affected with regard to the love of home and of 
country. ‘To be driven out from one’s native land—a wanderer among 
foreign nations—seemed to the Greeks a greater punishment than death, 
and to be the appropriate penalty for an impious man.* Before the influ- 
ence of the universal Church had counteracted the pride and cruelty of 
the national spirit, which alienated man from man, the condition of a 
foreigner was truly wretched. St. Augustin says, that a man would 
rather keep company with his dog, than with another man who did not 
understand the language which he spoke.t And even had it been other- 
wise, who could be insensible to the feelings expressed by Hyppolytus, 
when he bids adieu to the land of his birth, the scene of his youthful 
sports, and the witness of his happy days? The Catholic religion, not- 
withstanding the universality of its sphere of action, had not destroyed 
or diminished these feelings. St. Ambrose, speaking of the eminent vir- 
tues of the patriarch Abraham, remarks in the first place the command 
which he received to go forth from his country, and from his acquaint- 
ances, and from his father’s house, and then he adds, ‘It would have 
been sufficient to say from thy country,’’ but the rest was added in or- 
der to prove his affection.t ‘“Why do you fly?” asks St. Ambrose, 
addressing those who dreaded the advance of the barbarians. «Per. 
haps,” he continues, ‘“ you fear captivity. Do you not know that this 
is the greatest captivity, not to behold your country? And what can be 
more grievous than the banishment of a journey.”|| How well is that 
described by the great poet—who passed so many years of his own life 
in wandering—where, describing the first glimmering dawn, he adds, 


** That breaks 
More welcome to the pilgrim still, as he 
Sojourns less distant on his homeward way.”§ 


St. Bernard, in the age of the greatest fervour for pilgrimages, in the 
age of the crusades, himself the preacher of the crusade, reckons the love 
of our country among the fruits of justice.** Judge then, from all this, 
whether the pilgrim in distant lands, who could say of himself, like 
Ulysses, that he had never entered his country since he first followed 
Godfrey or Richard to Jerusalem to help the Christians, but had always 
been wandering full of sorrows, that his constant wishes and expectation 
were to arrive at his home, and to see the day of return— 


” ’ \ 2 » 
oluadé +” enbieevas neat voorimcoy nuczp idéobas.tt 


Whether, I say, this pilgrim, be he layman or priest, knight or palmer, 
ought not to have been reckoned among the tribe of mourners? 


SE RT enema! Aen at ee MOE WIE MOTT WE ee gay ener SIT 
* Eurip. Hyppolyt. 1050. + De Civitate Dei, lib. xix. cap. 7. 
tS. Ambros. lib. de Abrah. Patriarch. || S. Ambrosii Serm. Ixxxv. 

§ Purg. xxvii. ** De Ordine Vite. Tf Odyss. v. 220. 


AGES OF FAITH. 225 


But let us note some details relative to the manner of their journey, 
and to the consolations afforded them on the way. 

Before setting out, the pilgrim provided himself with a commendatory 
letter, called a letter of communion, which was composed so as to pre- 
vent the possibility of its being forged. These letters used to be given, 
not only to all clerks who travelled to a different diocese, and who, by 
the canons of the Council of Tours, in the year 461, were prohibited 
from travelling without them, but also to all laymen, in evidence of their 
being at peace with the Church: for as Optatus Milevitanus says, ** The 
whole world was formed into one society and communion.”’* "Thus the 
testimonial of Catholic faith answered to the c¢ufoaz, or 'Tessera of the 
ancients, which were tokens of hospitality, made so that a person, by pro- 
ducing one piece, might be recognised by another who had its corres- 
ponding part. Jason tells Medea that he will give her these symbols to 
insure for her an hospitable reception from his friends in the country to 
which she is going.t 'Thomassinus alludes to this subject in treating on 
hospitality, to whose observations the reader may refer. 

Humility, simplicity, and charity, characterised the pilgrim’s way. 
In the old fabliaux of the two rich citizens and the labourer, the former 
going on a pilgrimage, and being joined by a peasant, they all three 
travel on lovingly together, and join their provisions in a common stock. 
The duty of the Teutonic knights as pilgrims was denoted on the seal 
of their order, which represented the mother of Christ seated on an ass, 
holding the infant Jesus in her arms, with Joseph walking and leading 
the animal, the star going before them as when they fled into Egypt.t 
Little difficulties were not to interrupt the course. “'The morning rain 
stops not the pilgrim,” is the proverb we have derived from these ages. 
In the rules given to the Knight Templars, they were directed to travel 
two or three together, and when they came to any place in which there 
was a house belonging to the order, they were obliged to take up their 
lodging there with the brethren, and they were directed to provide them- 
selves with a light, which should be kept burning during the night near 
where they slept. ‘* When you go ona journey, (says St. Bonaventura) 
live in great peace with him whom the superior will have given to you 
for a companion. Never engage in any dispute with him, although you 
should be in the right, but yield to him with tranquillity, and keep silence, 
because it is seldom that any one is convicted by disputing, or made to 
change his opinion. Preserve your own peace, that you may give peace 
to others, and begin by appeasing yourself, and then you may appease 
him; because, what you would say in trouble and agitation to him who 
is troubled and agitated, would only trouble and agitate him the more; 
and you will more easily win him by your gentleness and patience, than 
by all the reasons you could alledge ; for virtue is not taught by vice, nor 
humility by pride. Be accommodating and agreeable on the journey, 
but without dissipation or compromise of your duty.”’|| 

Monks, like minor friars, were bound to travel two and two. On 
their way they were commanded to show respect to every one, and to 


EEE ee ee ee 


* Vide Joan. Devoti Institut. Canonic. lib. ii. + Eurip. Medea, 613. 
{ Voigt Geschichte Preussens, ii. 57. . 

] S. Bonaventure de Reformat. Hominis exter. cap. 36. | 

Vor. II —29 


226 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


salute all strangers whom they met, to take every occasion of consoling, 
instructing, and edifying those in whose company they found themselves, 
and never to show harshness or rudeness in reproving such as acted 
wrong in their presence; but to admonish them with gentleness and hu- 
mility, so that in this way going through the world, they might literally 
accomplish the order of Jesus Christ, to preach the gospel to every crea- 
ture. St. Martin converted a robber who happened to travel along with 
him. They were always to endeavour to arrive at the place of sleeping 
before late, that there might be no hurry to themselves or inconvenience 
to their hosts.* Monks on a journey were advised to take little books 
with them, and Mabillon describes the volumes for this purpose, which 
were in a monastery of Cistercians. St. Gregory the Great says, ‘that 
the Abbot Aéquitius used to carry sacred pages in leather cases on each 
of his sides.”’ There were books expressly composed for the pilgrims, 
containing prayers, and hymns, and litanies suitable to their engage- 
ment. ‘The moral work entitled Le Dialogue du Crucifix et du Pélerin, 
was written by one of these pilgrims, William Alexis, the humble prior 
of the monastery of Bury, in the diocese of Evreux. He wrote it in the 
year 1486, at the request, as he says himself, ‘‘ of some pilgrims of Rou- 
en, who were with him on the holy voyage, for their spiritual consolation, 
and to excite them to devotion and patience.’’ Gouget observes, ‘ that 
it is a most pious work, and that the author had always in view the 
engagements of his state.’’t Companies of pilgrims travelling together 
recited the psalms and sung litanies on the way. 

St. Gerard, bishop of Toule, made a pilgrimage to Rome for the sake 
of devotion. So leaving not a little substance for the support of the 
poor, he set out on his journey with twelve companions of the clerical 
and monastic order, who with him might continually chant psalms or 
jubilations. They seemed to make the whole road to Rome one church, 
the standard of the cross always preceding them. Who could describe 
the abundant alms which they dispensed on the way? Upon arriving 
at Pavia, they were received by the holy Maiolus abbot of Cluny,t and 
the blessed Adhelbert, who was afterwards a martyr.|| ‘*O what spirit- 
ual exultation was theirs! What conversation on the supernal kingdom 
ever to be desired! What divine discourse upon the divine word! Each 
hung upon the other’s lips. Each believed that he heard Christ in the 
other, who certainly dwelled in them.’’§ When pious travellers entered 
a town, they used to visit first all the places of devotion which it con- 
tained; then they used to offer their alms to the hospitals, and serve the 
poor that were in them. In the time of Petrarch, when the emperor 
Charles and the empress came to Rome to be crowned on Easter Sun- 
day, arriving there on Maunday Thursday, on the two following days, 
he visited the churches in a pilgrim’s habit. Many travellers of the 
modern school feel themselves strangers and aliens as they pass through 
the nations of the Catholic church, and seem as if never to be at ease, 
or capable of perfect refreshment, till they arrive at that little city of 
Calvin, where the law at present forbids men to proclaim the divinity 


* S. Bonaventure Speculum Novitiorum, cap. 29, 31. 

+ Bibliotheque Frangais, tom. x. 119. + Who ruled from the year 948 to 994. 
|| Bishop of Prague, crowned with martyrdom in the year 997. 

§ Acta Tullensium Episcoporum apud Marten. Thesaur. Anecdot. tom. iii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 227 


of Christ; but the pilgrim of the middle ages had the consolation of find- 
ing his home in every church which he passed on the way. Every 
where he found the same holy rites, the same language which had been 
familiar to him from childhood. Did his heart for a moment fail at the 
thought of his course being unaccomplishable, and did the memory of 
home and the prospect of danger prompt him to return without seeing 
the place of his desire? in prayer, at the foot of the altar, he gathered 
fresh strength and courage to continue on his way, for he felt as if he 
were then but for the first moment setting out from home. The Missa 
Sicca or Nautica used to be celebrated on ship-board. When St. Louis 
was a prisoner in the hands of the Sarassins, he had a Missa Sicca ccle- 
brated in his presence. ‘The rubic prescribed that the priest should be 
clad as usual in the sacred vestments; that he should read the mass till 
the preface; that the canon was to be omitted; that the pater-noster was 
then to be said; but that all the secrets were to be omitted, and that 
neither chalice nor host was to be on the altar. In later ages Pope Ben- 
edict XIV. gave permission to have mass said on board the ships of the 
Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, provided the sea was calm and the 
sky serene.* Guido de Monte Rocherii, who wrote about the year 
1333, approves of the custom of celebrating a Missa Sicea before trav- 
ellers who should arrive late and after the priest had said his mass. In 
this case he says, “that the priest after reading the mass of the day, 
should show relics instead of continuing the canon.’”? Even in desolate 
and benighted regions, religion supplied the wanderer with an idea 
which served as a substitute for home: for, as the Athenian general said 
to his soldiers in his affecting speech on the retreat from Syracuse, ‘that 
they were to consider it as if they themselves, wherever they happened 
to rest on the way, immediately constituted the city,’’t so these bands 
of Catholic pilgrims, when they had to traverse infidel lands, were con- 
soled with remembering, that wherever the hand of Providence might 
conduct their steps, they were themselves holy Sion and the walls of 
Jerusalem. 

Bounty to the poor was the virtue more than all others pre-eminently 
to distinguish the pilgrims, who never forgot that it was when travelling 
the good Samaritan practised that memorable work of charity, and that 
a hostel was the scene of it. The joy and devotion expressed by pil- 
grims on first coming in sight of Jerusalem or Rome, or the temple of 
their vow, was a subject which has employed the genius of the noblest 
poets and painters. Clarke thus describes his first view of Jerusalem: 
‘«*Hagiopolis!’ exclaimed a Greek in the van of our cavalcade, and 
instantly throwing himself from his horse, was seen upon his knees 
bare-headed. Suddenly the sight burst upon us all. ‘The effect pro- 
duced was that of perfect silence throughout the whole company. Many 
of our party, by an immediate impulse, took off their hats as if entering 
a church, without being sensible of so doing. The Greeks and Catho. 
lics shed torrents of tears; presently beginning to cross themselves with 
unfeigned devotion, they asked if they might be permitted to take off 
the covering from their feet, and proceed bare-footed to the holy sepul- 
chre. We had not been prepared for the grandeur of the spectacle which 


SS SS ee ea 


* Benedict, xiv. de Sacrificio Misse ii. 48, ft Lib. vii. 77. 


228 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


the city alone exhibited.’’ So also we read, that after the first trans- 
ports of joy on beholding Jerusalem, deep repentance succeeded through 
the whole host of the crusaders, for ‘Tasso, at this point, closely follows 
history. 
“Scantly they durst their feeble eyes dispread 

Upon that town, where Christ was sold and bought ; 

Where, for our sins, he, faultless, suffered pain, 

There where he died, and where he liv’d again. 

Soft words, low speech, deep sobs, sweet sighs, salt tears, 

Rose from their breasts, with joy and pleasure mixt: 

For thus fares he the Lord aright that fears, 

Fear on devotion, joy on faith is fixt: 

Their naked feet trod on the dusty way, 

Following th’ ensample of their zealous guide; 

Their scarfs, their crests, their plumes and feathers gay, 

They quickly doft, and willing laid aside.’’* 


The hill whence the pilgrims gain the first view of St. James of Com- 
postello, is called Montjoye, or Mons Gaudii. The number and devo- 
tion of the pilgrims at various holy places would be so great, that whole 
towns used to spring up and be established in consequence. At St. 
Maur, it used to be a great privilege to the inhabitants, who alone had 
the right to sell candles to the pilgrims for the procession.t The great- 
est concourse was always at the principal festival, celebrated at that 
particular place. Never shall I lose the memory of the devout multi- 
tude which flocked to the Seraphic mountain of Alvernio, when that 
simple and joyous family of Christ, dwelling there in great innocence, 
and ministering in all things to strangers, commemorated the stigmata 
of its blessed founder. ‘Thither came men and women, old and young, 
rich and poor, and all entered as if it were into their own house, so sure 
was the humblest pilgrim of receiving food, and fire, and welcome. 
Then when the bell sounded for the first vespers, this throng of pilgrims 
which had filled the courts, and cloisters, and corridors, and halls of 
the convent, hastened into the church, where they met before the altar 
like one family. On the evening of the next day, which closed the 
pious solemnity, these pilgrims descended from the mountain, if not like 
St. Francis, bearing the signs of our redemption on their bodies, yet 
assuredly as far as one could judge from their saintly looks and by their 
whole demeanour, having the cross in their hearts imprinted by the 
Spirit of God. Sometimes, without regard to particular festivals, the 
penitential seasons of the ecclesiastical year were spent in these pious 
journeys. King Robert of France used to spend whole Lents on pil- 
grimages. : 

With respect to the assistance afforded to pilgrims on their way, there 
are some facts which deserve notice. In the eye not only of religion but 
of the state, they were privileged persons. In the remarkable letter of 
Canute to the bishops and nation of England, after describing his pil- 
grimage to Rome, he mentions having taken occasion to obtain from the 
emperor Conrad and other princes, an exemption for all his subjects 
who should make the pilgrimage to Rome, that they might not be de- 
tained at the barriers, nor subjected to any exactions on their way. 


* Book iii. + Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. v. 


AGES OF FAITH. 229 
«As for pilgrims,”’ says a ecapitulary of Pepin-le-bref, «who make a 
pilgrimage with a view to God, let no toll be demanded from them.’’* 
In the year 1358, Rudolph Archduke of Austria and Lord of Rappers- 
weil, undertook the amazing work of erecting a bridge over the lake of 
Zurich, though the breadth in that place is eighteen hundred paces. 
This was done in order to assist the pilgrims who were travelling to 
Einsiedelin, as they used frequently to be prevented from crossing the 
lake by storms which opposed the fulfilment of their pious vows.t 
The erection of hostels for the reception of pilgrims was a work of char- 
ity to which communities and individuals devoted themselves. Cities 
and private persons made foundations to procure asylums for their fel- 
low townsmen in places of pilgrimage, or for such as were on their way 
thither. In the year 1752, the magistrates of Avignon wrote to the 
council of Rheims, to say that every native of Rheims or of Champagne 
passing by their city had a right to be nourished during three days, and 
to receive an ecu on proceeding forward.t At Lille, we read of two 
ancient hospitals for the pilgrims. There were five at Douai, and there 
was one at each of the towns of Orchies, Armentiers, and Seclin, where 
the gray sisters and other pious persons exercised hospitality.|| In the 
year 1353, several hostels were founded at Einsiedelin, for the gratuit- 
ous reception of pilgrims, rich and poor, who were all to be received 
without respect of person, for God’s sake.§ At Freyburg, in Switzer- 
land, shortly after entering the city from the side of Germany, and 
before ascending the steep hill, you see the small ancient hostel for the 
pilgrims of St. James of Compostello. ‘The image of a pilgrim with 
his bottle, cockle hat, and staff, stands in a gothic niche over the door. 
At Paris there was the hospital of St. James to receive pilgrims who 
should be going to Compostello. Some thought that it had been found- 
ed by Charlemagne, but it was not established till the year 1315, and 
it was the work of some Parisians, who, having made this pilgrimage, 
and wishing to perpetuate the memory of it, formed themselves into a 
fraternity. Every year on the first Monday after the festival of St. 
James the Greater, the brethren assembled in the church of the hospital, 
and made a solemn procession with the staff of a pilgrim in one hand 
and a lighted taper in the other. Over the gate of this hospital of St. 
James was the following inscription: ‘** Nullos fundatores ostento, quia 
humiles, quia plures, quorum nomina tabella non caperet, celum recipit ; 
vis illis inseri? vestem prebe, panem frange pauperibus peregrinis.’’** 
In the great hospital of the Knights of St. John, at Paris, there was an 
immense square tower which contained four vast halls, one over the 
other, furnished with beds for the pilgrims of Jerusalem, and for the 
sick who asked hospitality.tt At Milan, Barnabo Visconti founded an 
hospice for the entertainment of pilgrims. At Rome, besides the vast 
hospital for pilgrims where every one is received, there were a multi- 
tude of similar foundations, though of a confined nature, which were of 


* Cap. Pipp. A. 755. Baluz. tom. i. col. 175, 
+ Einsiedlische Chronik by Tschudi 73. + Anquetil, Hist. de Rheims, lib. iii. 
|| Hist. des Saints de Lille, Douai, &c. 672. § Tschudi Einsiedlische Chronik, 69. 
** De Saint-Victor, Tableau de Paris, tom. ii. p. 490. 
++ Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, i. 6. 
U 


230 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


great antiquity. ‘The Hospital of the Holy Spirit still bears a name 
from its proximity to the hospice, which had been founded for their 
countrymen by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Alfred was the founder of 
this house, which, on the change of religion in England, was converted 
by the Catholics into a college. The French had also their hospitium 
for French pilgrims; and there was an hospitium for foreign secular 
priests of all nations who should be travelling. But, as connected with 
great events and illustrious titles, no foundation was so remarkable as the 
Pilgrim’s Hospital at Jerusalem, which gave rise to a renowned order, 
whose fame must endure as long as the world lasts. The Bull of Pope 
Honorius LI., speaks of it in these terms: ‘ Those who, with various 
perils by sea, visit, through devotion, the holy city, and the sepulchre 
of our Lord, know well how dear to God, and how venerable to men, 
is that place which affords an agreeable and useful asylum for strangers, 
and for the poor in the German Hospital of St. Mary at Jerusalem: for 
there the indigent and the poor are refreshed, obsequious attention is 
paid to the sick, and they who have been fatigued by diverse labours 
and dangers are restored and refreshed ; and in order that they may pro- 
ceed with greater security to the holy places, sanctified by the corporal 
presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, there are brethren especially appoin- 
ted, at the expense of that hospital, to wait upon them.” 

The hostels, or inns, which have succeeded in most places to these 
ancient foundations of charity, have, in Catholic countries, still retained 
an aspect which gives them an interest in the estimation of devout or 
of romantic travellers, ‘The inkeeper of the middle ages took care to 
have holy images in the apartments of his hostel for his guests. There 
was a room, or at least a table, separate for persons who were excom- 
municated.* All which did not prevent persons from fancying, that 
there were some inns which the demon had kept, and which were served 
by his imps. ‘The very signs of inns continued to favour the idea that 
every journey was a pilgrimage; for such were the associations con- 
nected with images of the three kings, of the flight into Egypt, and of 
the pilgrim, which were so generally placed over the gate to invite the 
traveller to pull his rein. At Bacione, the last stage to Rome, there is 
a lone huge inn, which, from the throng and variety of guests, may 
remind one of a pilgrims’ hostel; and on the bleak, wild mountain of 
Radicoffani, there is another solitary inn, in which is a chapel, where 
mass is said. Arriving here on the festival of St. Michael, I had the 
happiness of finding that a priest was just arrived for the purpose of 
saying mass, and all the people of the inn proceeded to assist at it with 
great devotion. Arriving about the Ave Maria, at any inn in the states 
of the church, where one so often meets companies of ecclesiastics tra- 
velling, the sound of their solemn voices, repeating their holy office 
aloud, seems to impart to the inn the sanctity of a cloister, and consoles 
the solitary pilgrim, who can feel himself as if domesticated under a 
holy roof; while the sacred dramatic show, which sometimes succeeds 
during supper, completes the charm, at least in the estimation of one 
who seeks in travelling, not luxury, but the simple and holy manners 
of the antique world. Lord Marmion’s train arriving at the hostel 


* Monteil, Hist. des Frangais, tom. iii. 487. 


AGES OF FAITH. 231 


where the palmer sits by the fire, furnishes the poet with a picture, of 
which the colouring denotes a more northern clime, though the sub- 
stance is familiar to us all— 
“ Down from their seats the horsemen ee 

With jingling spurs the court-yard rung 

Soon by the chimney’s merry blaze, 

Through the rude hostel might you gaze ; 

Might see where, in the dark nook aloof, 

The rafters of the sooty roof 

Bore wealth of winter cheer ; 

Of sea-fowl dried, and Soland’s store, 

And gammons of the tusky boar, 

And savoury haunch of deer.” 


But not merely in the inns and hostels was the Eilatine: a welcome 
guest: every where alike, whether to the cottage, or to the castle, he 
might direct his steps, at any hour of the day or night, and feel secure 
of meeting with a kind reception. No where in a Catholic land would 
he find the ¢v72gev, whom Pindar mentions; nor the ‘stranger-hating 
house,’’ which Admetus speaks of in the Greek play. As in the primi- 
tive days of Christian society, if a stranger showed that he professed 
the orthodox faith, and was in the communion of the Church, he was 
received with open arms wherever he went. ‘To have refused him en- 
trance would have been thought the same thing as to have rejected Jesus 
Christ himself.* Even without any knowledge of his character, the 
wanderer was admitted to hospitality ; and the general sentiment of the 
host, on such occasions, may be learned from chivalrous tales, as from 
that of Gyron le Courtois; for we read there, that when Danayn le 
Roux and his varlet were riding one night in the forests, they espied a 
fire in the distance, and coming up to it, they found that it came from a 
tent, in which a knight was lodging with his company. ‘The squire 
went up to the knight in the tent, and said, ‘¢Sir knight, here is a knight 
all armed, and we do not know what he wishes to say.”” ‘Bien soit il 
venu,’’ replied their lord, ‘* par advanture vouldra il ceste nuyte demou- 
rer avecques nous. Se il est preudhomme, moult en suis lye et joyeux 
de sa compaignie avoir, et se il est autre, Dieu le conseille. Sa bonte 
le conduyra, et sa mauvaistrie luy demourra quant il se partira de 
nous.”’*+ The church took the lead here. St. Hildegard styles Pope 
Eugene, ‘“‘ The Father of Strangers.’’{ In fact, at Rome, on Maunday 
Thursday, the holy father shows himself the servant of strangers, repair- 
ing to the hospital of the poor pilgrims, who have come thither from 
every clime, and there humbly ministering to wash their feet. To secure 
the protection, not alone of pilgrims, but of all persons who travelled 
through the world, was a constant object of solicitude with the Holy 
See, and various councils raised their solemn voice to further it, in oppo- 
sition to local abuses, and even to the civil legislation. Vincent of Beau- 
vais cites a Council of Lateran, which says, ‘‘ They who with damnable 
cupidity pillage the substance of Christians suffering shipwreck, whom, 
by the rule of faith, they are bound to assist, become subject to excom- 
munication, unless they restore what they have taken. Nothing must 


* Benedict xiv. De Canonizatione Servorum Dei, lib. i. { F. 411, 
tS Hildegardi Epist. i. 


232 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


be taken from shipwrecked persons, whether found on sea or on shore ; 
nor will any custom, statute, or prescription, excuse offenders in this 
case; for it is against the precept of our Lord, who says, ‘Do unto 
others what you would they should do unto you.’’’* 

In the year 1377, Archbishop Albert, of Prussia, published a charge, 
for the utility of the faithful navigating, to declare that such persons, 
merchants, or others, are placed under the protection of the Apostolic 
See; and, in the event of any of them suffering shipwreck, to call upon 
all who are near to bear them assistance, for God’s sake, and for the 
sake of natural equity, and as they would wish to be themselves assisted 
in similar circumstances.t Even in times of war, pilgrims always found 
an efficient protection in being under the safeguard of the Holy See, 
which gave them free liberty to pass into hostile nations. We must 
hope, therefore, for the honour of Buccleugh, that no credit need be 
paid to the old harper, who sings of the Lady of Branksome, gathering 
a band to surprise Lord Cranstoun, as he went on pilgrimage to the 
chapel on the edge of St. Mary’s Lake. ‘The general obligation of 
respecting and succouring the stranger was an express precept of the 
Almighty to his chosen people; and it was a primeval tradition, which 
we find transmitted in the writings of many of the ancients. «+ Adve- 
nam non contristabis, neque affliges eum,”’ is the command to the Jews, 
which is elsewhere repeated. ‘+ Advena sit inter vos, quasi indigena ; 
et diligetis eum quasi vosmetipsos.’’|| And the Athenian, in Plato, ob- 
serves that offences against a stranger, or host, are visited with a more 
severe punishment from Heaven than those committed against one’s own 
countryman, of which the reason is given, in the following most amia- 
ble words, which savour not the least of modern political economists— 
dennos yap cov 6 Levoc ereriowy re uxt Zuyyerciy ercetyoregos dySetarose nat Secie.§ 

But to return to the pilgrim, and to view him seated beneath the hos- 
pitable roof. Those vast chimneys of the feudal castle, over which 
used often to be carved the hunting of St. Hubert; and in which a 
whole cart-load of wood used to be burnt every day in winter, used to 
hear strange variety of sweet and solemn words,—the song of the page, 
the counsels of the chaplain, the fable of the troubadour, the wanderings 
of the palmer and his woes. What were those pilgrims’ tales of which 
the men in our age speak so scornfully ? Were they related by men 
resembling, indeed, those wanderers, who used to visit Ithaca, of whom 
the swine-herd says, in Homer, that they are apt to lie, nor do they 
wish to tell truth; but they have always some idle stories about Ulys- 
ses, by means of which they hope to gain the favour of Penelope; and 
she loves them, and, weeping, asks them a thousand questions,** or, 
like these modern writers of travels, these narrators of scandal, and 
calumniators of Catholic nations, who, if they were honest, might say 
with the Sycophant, in Plautus— 


‘‘ Advenio ex Seleucia, Macedonia, Asia, atque Arabia, 
Quas ego neque oculis, neque pedibus unquam usurpavi meis.” tf 


Ah, no! it was a different race of men from all these. Jn their journeys 
* Speculum Doctrinale, lib. x. cap. 62. + Voigt Geschichte Preussens ili. 509. 


t Exod, xxii. |) Levit. xix. : 
§ Plato de Legibus, lib. v. ** Od. xiv. 125. ++ Trinummus iv. 2. 


AGES OF FAITH. 233 


they were never to affect to bear news, however good and probable : 
‘‘For,” as St. Bonaventura said, ‘it was not the part of religious men 
to be news-bearers. The wise man had given them this precept, ‘Avoid 
spreading reports, lest men should say you are the authors of them.’ ’’* 
‘‘Let him who wishes to hear good news,” Says a great writer of the 
time, ‘hear Christ speaking concerning the kingdom of God, the future 
judgment, the heavenly Jerusalem, the felicity of the supernal citizens, 
the eternal rejoicing of the angelic choirs. ‘Let him hear the prophets 
announcing the mysteries of Christ, and denouncing penalty against 
sinners ; let him hear the apostles and evangelists relating the works and 
miracles of Christ; let him hear the doctors and other masters beauti- 
fully discoursing, expounding the happy way, and refuting errors.” f 
Their journeys had no features to amuse the profligate, like those which 
belonged to that famous voyage to Brundusium, to the account of which 
the moderns are never tired listening. Travellers of the modern disci- 
pline would have had nothing to fear from landing upon Scythian 
‘Taurus, while the Temple of Diana stood, if the daughter of Agamemnon 
said true, that nothing but what was holy could ever be offered to the 
goddess. She would refuse to sacrifice any one of these men, saying— 
ou wadaegoy oyra’ roy dD” bctoy diow pover.+ 

But the case would have been different in the middle ages; for the wan- 
dering scholar-boy, or the hoary palmer, would then have touched there 
to enrich the poet's mournful themes ; and, therefore, the tales and dis- 
course of those who had avoided that danger would be pure as the oracles 
of God. Their conversation also, though relative to foreign lands, had 
nothing to recommend it to the ears of that race of men most foolish, as 
the poet styles them, «who always vituperate things domestic, and look 
on all sides for distant objects, seeking vain things with idle hope.”’| 
Their devout and solemn narrations suited not the children of vanity, nor 
those who had not their treasure with them ; yet, though it was far from 
the gentle pilgrim to be a common laugher, still, as St. Bonaventura pre- 
scribes to the monk, in lodging with seculars on his journey, he was to 
be simple and humble, gentle without flattery, gay and affable without 
dissipation. It was his duty to moderate, on these occasions, the aus- 
terity of his manners; and for the sake of charity and honest utility, to 
lay aside his gravity for a time.§ 

To judge merely from what occurs in our age, it would be impossible 
to understand or credit the interest which these pilgrims could inspire in 
every circle of listeners, whose attention to their tales they craved, for 
Christ’s dear Church’s sake. Of all descriptions of men at present, the 
traveller is, perhaps, the most insipid and disgustful; it seems as if he 
can only add the description of eating and drinking to the common-place 
narrations which are to be found in every library made up of scandal, 
reviling of holy things, calumny and pretended discoveries in the in- 
trigues of government, and in the science of economy ; and besides this, 
if travellers were themselves of a higher order, men would be wanting 
in feeling to appreciate them: they would rather trust their pompous 


* S. Bonaventure Speculum Novitiorum, cap. 32. 

+ Thomas @ Kempis, Hortulus Rosarum, cap. 12, t Eurip. Iph. in Taur. 1029, 
i] Pindar, Pyth. Od. iii. § Id. cap. 31. 

Vou. II1.—30. u2 


234 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


journals than their unpretending guest. The truth is, that religion is 
the source of all deep and powerful interest, so that where there is no 
religion, there can be no really intense intellectual interest experienced 
on any subject; for, let the understanding be ever so anxious to create 
one, the heart will still prove, on its demands, a cold and powerless organ. 
Hence, no one now has sufficient regard for a wanderer, as even to ask 
him, in the Homeric style— 


ris rode sic dydecv 5 moss rot monde nde Toxines 5* 


It is only, How stood the exchange, and what majority had ministers !— 
or, rather, ten to one it is, if possible, more prosaic still.—what money 
have you in your purse? But in ages of faith, when the hearts of men 
overflowed with the love of Christ, when in thought and in the deepest 
affection of their souls they ever stood on Calvary, and wept at the holy 
sepulchre, no sweeter moment was there than that in which they listened 
to the pilgrims describing the wonders of Jerusalem. ‘To hear of Rome, 
too,—of sacred Rome,—and of Christ’s vicar, who meekly sways the 
race of pre-elected men, full of reverence and amaze, desire in their 
minds grew with satiety. He it was who could tell of such things that 
held both keys to their heart, turning the wards, opening and shutting 
with a skill so sweet that besides him into their inmost breast scarce 
any other could admittance find. As Martial says toa Roman, who was 
with him in the country, ‘* Romam tu mihi sola facis ;”’ so, he who had 
been in these sacred places was to them Rome and Jerusalem; and, like 
the Abbess of St. Hilda, they would style him holy Palmer; for, surely, 
they would add— 


“ 


He must be sainted man, 
Whose blessed feet have trod the ground 
Where the Redeemer’s tomb is found.” 


His very face was as a book, where men might read strange, mournful, 
yet beatific things. The ideal of noble chivalry, with all its sufferings, 
seem united there with that of the saintly life: and, in fact, the knightly 
pilgrim, like the Ulysses of the Odyssey, seems to be more in his gen- 
uine element when wandering in the midst of adventures and tempests, 
and in disguise, than when openly counselling and fighting on the plains 
of Asia. In Marmion, we have a fine description of the palmer, when 
Young Selby proposes that this stranger should be Lord Marmion’s 
guide— 
‘¢ Here is a holy palmer come, 

From Salem first, and last from Rome: 

One that hath kiss’d the blessed tomb, 

And visited each holy shrine, 

In Araby and Palestine ; 

On hills of Armenie hath been, 

Where rest of ark may yet be seen ; 

By that Red Sea, too, hath he trod, 

Which parted at the prophet’s rod ; 

In Sinai’s wilderness he saw 

The mount where Israel heard the law ; 

He shows Saint James’s cockle-shell ; 

Of fair Montserrat, too, can tell; 

And of that grot where olives nod— 


EE eo ee tated ui Bs ee 


* Od. xiv. 187. 


AGES OF FAITH. 235 


Where, darling of each heart and eye, 

é From all the youth of Sicily, 
Saint Rosalie retired to God. 
To stout Saint George, of Norwich merry ; 
St. Thomas, too, of Canterbury; 
Cuthbert, of Durham ; and Saint Bede, 
For his sins’ pardon hath he prayed. 
He knows the passes of the north, 
And seeks for shrines beyond the Forth; 
Little he eats, and long will wake, 
And drinks but of the stream or lake: 
This were a guide o’er moor or lake.” 


The English knight approves of the plan, and says, that he loves such 
holy wanderers, who can always cheer the way with some legendary 
strain; but young Selby, with an altered countenance, and finger laid 
on his lip, intimates that he is, perhaps, an over solemn and mysterious 
guide; and he is going on to describe his air and manner, when Mar- 
mion interrupts him, and says, that he will have no other guide but the 
palmer— 

“So please you, gentle youth, to call 
This palmer to the castle-hall. 
The summon’d palmer came in place— 
His sable cowl o’er-hung his face: 
In his black mantle was he clad, 
With Peter’s keys, in cloth of red, 
On his broad shoulders wrought ; 
The scallop-shell his cap did deck ; 
The crucifix around his neck 
Was from Loretto brought ; 
His sandals were with travel tore— 
Staff, budget, bottle, scrip he wore ; 
The faded palm-branch in his hand 
Show’d pilgrim from the holy land. 
When, as the palmer came in hall, 
Nor lord, nor knight, was there more tall 
Or had a statelier step withal, 
Or look’d more high and keen; 
But his gaunt frame was worn with toil, 
His cheek was sunk, alas, the while! 
Poor wretch! the mother that him bare, 
If she had been in presence there, 
In his wan face and sun-burnt hair, 
She had not known her child. 
Danger, long travel, want, or woe, 
Soon change the form that best we know.” 


The palmer consents to guide the knight, but observes that they must 
set out with morning-tide, adding— . 


** For I have solemn vows to pay, 
And may not linger by the way, 
To fair St. Andrew’s bound, 
Within the ocean-cave to pray, 
Where good St. Rule his holy lay, 
From midnight to the dawn of day, 
Sung to the billows’ sound.” 


The remembrance of the palmer might turn our thoughts to muse upon 
the Platonic notion of the pilot, where Socrates explains what renders 
him so conscious of the little value of his services to those whom he 


236 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


guides over the watery way ; for, if that passage be compared with the 
description of the saintly wanderer, there will be found the same coun- 
tenance and language in them both. ‘The latter guides the knight, and 
seems not to imagine that he has performed any great office; he partici- 
pates in his sufferings and success; and, though full of charity, yet, 
whether he sees him cast down or elevated, he changes not his tone. 
Alike to him seem the prosperous and adverse course of his companion; 
he rejoices with him as though he rejoiced not; and enables him to see at 
length the day of return, and no sound of congratulation passes his lips. 
What is this but the same phenomena which Socrates observed in the pi- 
lot? «* Witness the pilot,” says he, ‘by whose skill our lives and pro- 
perties are preserved from such great danger ; and yet how modest he is 
and humble, and how far from making great boast, as if he could perform 
any thing wonderful; but if he preserves us safe coming from A®gina, he 
only demands two obols; and if he leads us back safe from A.gypt or 
Pontus, with our sons and wives and riches, he asks but two drachms; 
and the man who possesses this art, and who can perform these things, 
goes down to the shore, and walks by the sea-side about his ship, in a 
lowly unassuming manner; for he perceives, I think, that it is very un- 
certain whether he has done a service or an injury to those whom he has 
saved from being drowned in the waves, knowing that he has put them 
on shore no better in body or soul than when he received them into his 
ship; he considers, then, that if any one, pressed with incurable mala- 
dies of body hath been saved by his means from perishing in the sea, 
the same is to be pitied, and has received no benefit from his hands; 
and if any one should have many incurable maladies in his soul, which 
is so much more precious than the body, it will be of no utility to him 
to preserve him from the sea; for he knows that it is not for the advan- 
tage of a wicked man to continue to live, since he must needs live ill; 
therefore, there is no law to ordain that a pilot should be honoured, al- 
though he saves us.’’* 

Many instances are on record of persons of profligate lives having 
been subdued and converted by a casual meeting with these holy wan- 
derers, whose dignified and saintly presence would strike even brute 
violence with adoration and blank awe. Here, again, one’s thoughts 
may return to what is told in pages of the old philosophy; for we read 
that, when Pythagoras descended from the sacred top of Carmel, where 
he had remained in solitary meditation, arriving at a bark, he uttered 
nothing but these words, Eis Aijurror 6 daéraovss Are you bound for Egypt? 
And they answering in the affirmative, he embarked, and remained silent 
during the whole voyage, for two nights and three days eating nothing, 
and constantly composed and motionless, so that the sailors concluded 
it was a demon that passed from Syria into Egypt; and they were care- 
ful to utter no bad words among themselves, and to abstain from all im- 
propriety till they had set him safe on shore.’’+ The licentious song- 
ster, or the rude and worldly knight, the lover of wine and minstrelsy, 
bent perhaps upon some dark deed, would little suppose that the palm- 
er’s presence could interrupt their merriment, yet, when confronted with 
him, “*how would one look from his majestic brow, seated as on the 


* Plato Gorgias. t Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita. cap. 3. 


AGES OF FAITH. 237 


top of virtue’s hill, discountenance them, despised, and put to rout all 
their array.” 

It was not necessary to ascribe to the palmer that knowledge of more 
than could be learned by holy lore, of which young Selby spoke, in 
order to account for the solemn and half terrific scene at the hostel 
hearth— 

** Resting upon his pilgrim staff, 
Right opposite the palmer stood : 
His thin dark visage seen but half— 
Half hidden by his hood. 
Still fix’d on Marmion was his look, 
Which he, who ill such gaze could brook, 
Strove by a frown to quell; 
But not for that, though more than once 
Full met their stern encountering glance, 
The palmer’s visage fell.” 


His silence was a commentary which made the song of Fitz-Eustace 
fall sad on Marmion’s ear; and when at length he spoke, though it was 
only these words, ‘‘ The death of a dear friend,”’ 


“Marmion, whose steady heart and eye 
Ne’er changed in worst extremity ; 
Marmion, whose soul could scantly brook, 
Even from his king, a haughty look ; 
Whose accent of command controll’d 
In camps the boldest of the bold— 
Thought, look, and utterance fail’d him now, 
Fall’n was his glance, and flush’d his brow : 
For either in the tone, 

Or something in the palmer’s look, 
So full upon his conscience strook, 
That answer he found none.” 


But it is time to return to our antique chronicles in search of instances 
that will illustrate the manner of a pilgrim’s life from real history. An 
abstract of the narrative of Brother Nicole, the Carmelite, will, perhaps, 
supply what is yet wanting in our conception of this character in the 
middle ages, and with this testimony the present chapter shall conclude. 
‘In the prologue, he states that he has accomplished this very holy and 
meritorious voyage, by the mercy of our sweet Jesus. I wish (he adds) 
to make known these noble and glorious places, to warn you to be mind- 
ful of our Lord Jesus, and that this book may be an amusement to many 
lords and ladies, who are curious to inquire respecting the land of pro- 
mise. What I have seen, I will declare, to the best of my poor ability ; 
and though this treatise be vile, and in need of much correction, never- 
theless I pray all readers or hearers, who shall have made the same pil- 
grimage, if they should find any thing here contrary to our holy faith, 
that they will dispose it in good order through charity in honour of Jesus 
our Lord ; for I protest that, neither in this present treatise, nor in any 
other which I have made, or may hereafter make, do I pretend to say 
or write any thing whatsoever which should be against faith or good 
manners; and I pray them, therefore, by charity, to correct my labours; 
for, whatever is presented, ought to be well arranged.”’ Speaking of 
the holy sepulchre in Jerusalem, he says, ‘So often as any one being 
faithful, or loyal in faith, enters within to contemplate the place, as 


238 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


many times does he behold, with the eyes of his mind, our Saviour 
Jesus there entombed.’’ And speaking of Golgotha, he exclaims, *« O, 
great God, who hast delivered us from hell and from eternal death, is 
there a spot on the earth more glorious, more virtuous, more worthy of 
honour !’? These are places which many Catholics kiss, shedding tor- 
rents of tears. ‘The devout visitation of the holy places leads to holy 
meditation, to good resolutions of amendment, and to compunction for 
sin; and, in my judgment, there is no Catholic pilgrim who does not 
return more virtuous, better, more perfect than he ever was before. 
What Christian, on entering that holy land, is not dissolved in tears ? 
Who is there that will not feel compunction, when merely from behold- 
ing that region, hearts are pierced, and laid bare with wondrous sighs? 
Let'a man be ever so wicked, it is impossible but that he must be 
changed at the mere view of what is before him. Sainte et salutaire 
progression et trés meritoire peregrination oultre la mer en Hierusalem: 
qui souffira a dicter ta value! Who is there that does not desire to 
amend his life, and to do penance for the time which he has lost, when 
he beholds before his eyes things so wondrous, and so calculated to in- 
cite to virtuous deeds! There, without doubt, is the grace of God dif- 
fused and imparted to all souls who do not place obstacles in its way by 
a malignant will. ‘Persons in all ages,”’ he continues, ‘have travelled 
far to see places and men that deserved reverence, witness Pythagoras, 
and Plato, and the noble queen Saba, and now we know, that after all 
the labours of men under the sun, one thing, and one thing alone is 
necessary to know, Jesus Christ crucified, and risen again, and ascended 
into heaven; and therefore St. Paul declares that he desires to know and 
to write nothing but only Jesus, and to glory in nothing but in his cross, 
by whom we are saved and delivered ; therefore no longer do any wise 
men glory in their wisdom, or in their riches, or power, or virtue, but 
all remember what St. John saith in his gospel, ‘ that eternal life is to 
know one only sovereign God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent.’ 
And although to attain this holy and salutary science, the gospel and the 
apostolic writings, and the daily preaching and proclaiming of the faith 
be widely sufficient, nevertheless to this not a little may contribute the 
said pilgrimage and the beholding of the holy places through simple 
love for our sweet Jesus, who in dying, has destroyed our death. 
Therefore, for the present, I conclude with St. Jerome, ‘that to have 
been in Jerusalem is not a very holy thing, but to have lived devoutly 
in Jerusalem, virtuously in holy conversation amidst a perverse genera- 
tion, is to be praised, and renders the pilgrim worthy of renown.’ After 
many vanities, alas, when the flower of my age had been lost, I began 
to consider the follies in which I had long slept; and the grace of Jesus 
awakening me to a sense of the worldly vanities by which I had been 
going to eternal perdition, I resolved from thenceforth to render testi- 
mony to the justice of the commandments of God and of my holy reli- 
gion. I set out on my pilgrimage from the convent of Ponteau, in the 
diocese of Rouen. ‘The reverend master Prior of the said convent, 
Geoffroy the Recluse, with a great company of the brethren of the con- 
vent, conducted me, during the space of three days, till we came to 
Chartres: en larmes et en pleurs fut nostre departement. There I 
waited for the setting out of a nobleman who is now a knight, the Seig- 


AGES OF FAITH. 239 


neur de la Mouriniere, with whom I set out in Easter week, 1487, and 
rode through Savoy and Turin, till we reached Venice for the festival 
of St. Mark. We took up our lodging at the Savage Man in St. Mark’s 
Place. Here we found many noblemen and clerks of France, some of 
whom joined our company, and among them was a Seigneur de Roche- 
fort from Auvergne, and also there came to us a gracious and wise child, 
a native of Lyon, called Sir Henry de Encharmois. At Venice, they 
agreed with the patron of the galley, who was to supply all their expen- 
ses of journeying and food during the whole pilgrimage, both from and 
back to Venice, and each pilgrim was to pay him forty fresh ducats, half 
at Venice and the other half at Jaffa. He remarks, that at Cyprus one 
could procure twelve sheep for a ducat. They staid at Venice six 
weeks, in order to visit all the relics which are there and in Padua. At 
length setting out, they sailed to Corfu, Candia, Crete, Patmos and 
Rhodes. He found the inhabitants of Corfu ‘Devote a Dieu, gent tres- 
humaine, et de grant honneur pleine.? We arrived at Rhodes about ten 
o’clock in the night on the eighth of July, and passed under the castle 
of St. Peter, which is an impregnable fortress in the possession of the 
Knights of Rhodes. The dogs of this castle keep wonderful guard, for 
they go out at night, and if there should any Christians escape from the 
rocks, the dogs are sure to find them and to lead them to the castle; and 
if they find a Turk they kill him if they can, or they bark so loud that 
it is known within the castle.* It is wonderful how this castle can be 
preserved to Christendom, for it seems only six miles from Turkey, 
which is separated only by a narrow arm of the sea. The hospital of 
the church of Rhodes is a wonderful place, built like a monastery, and 
in the great hall there are thirty-nine beds for sick people of all nations 
and degrees, if they only believe in Jesus Christ; and in the middle is 
a beautiful chapel where masses are sung every day; and the poor sick 
people are all served on silver by the seigneurs of Rhodes moult curi- 
eusement, and besides this, there are twenty-four chambers surrounding 
the cloister to lodge the pilgrims, who are received most fraternally, and 
they are invited most affectionately by the hospitaler who refreshes them, 
and serves them very joyously. 

‘On the Friday we had a fair wind in the stern, so that at six o’clock 
in the evening appeared the holy Jand. ‘Then you might have seen and 
heard the devout hearts; then were groans and tears, and chants of 
devotion. We had to remain at Jaffa thirteen days to wait for the 
father guardian, and so we tarried in good patience, praising our Re- 
deemer. At length we set forth; on approaching Rama, we were 
obliged to alight from our asses, and each pilgrim had to carry his bur- 
den with great pain, on account of the dreadful heat and of the dust, 
which was so thick that one could not see the other. ‘The Moors would 
not suffer us to enter Rama mounted, so we entered it thus on foot, and 
there we were lodged in the hospital founded by the money of Philip 
of Burgundy. May God absolve the noble duke! From Jaffa to Rama 
we were escorted by Mahometans, to protect us from the other Moors 
who kept throwing stones at us every step we made. Sometimes they 
have killed pilgrims: such was our peril. On the morning of Sunday, 


* Pin 


240 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


the fifth of August, mass was said at four o’clock by one of the monks; 
and then at the offertory, the father guardian instructed us how we 
were to behave on our journey towards the people of the country, 
speaking to us from the altar in Latin, Italian and German. ‘ Dear and 
well-beloved brethren in Jesus Christ, take heed to the following advice, 
that you may not lose the fruits of this holy journey. First, if any of 
you should have: incurred sentence of excommunication, the father guar- 
dian of this place, by the power of the holy father, can absolve you 
therefrom, to whom you must apply, and take consolation in this rejoic- 
ing which our Lord has granted to you, in beholding with your eyes 
the places on which he has trod in accomplishing the salvation of all 
men by his sacred blood. Secondly, you must believe firmly the 
articles of faith, for otherwise you will lose the merit and fruit of the 
pilgrimage. Thirdly, you must have great confidence as to your con- 
science, that you will have remission; and you must have contrition 
and a true intention of never again returning tosin. Fourthly, you must 
consider for what end you are come, and it must be for devotion and 
contemplation to see the holy places, weeping after Jesus Christ. Fifth- 
ly, I say to all, take heed, that you walk honestly and that you commit 
no evil. You must make no more mention of wine, unless you can 
carry some from the ship; there is no cellar here where you can buy 
any.’ We set out from Rama on foot as we entered it, and under great 
heat. On coming to the place where our asses were waiting, each pil- 
grim claimed his own; so it was four o’clock in the afternoon before 
we began our march. We travelled till midnight. From Rama to 
Jerusalem is thirty Italian miles. On the fall of night, we entered the 
mountains which were very rude and hard for me, because I was obliged 
to leave my ass. ‘Oncques ne fus plus lasse.’ It is the greatest dan- 
ger for pilgrims when they are left too far in the rear, for the people 
would desire nothing more than to destroy us one by one. At midnight 
we stopped to lodge under the shelter of an olive grove near a fountain, 
which was very refreshing to our thirst. Here we made our collation, 
and then under these olive trees the knights slept for three hours. An 
hour before day we mounted our asses, and rode till we saw the town 
of Arimathea. It was nothing but up and down hill, and it was laugh- 
able to look at our train one after the other. On reaching the summit 
whence we had the first view of Jerusalem, every one kissed the earth 
and raised his eyes to heaven. So we all entered the city, and the 
brethren of Mount Sion led all the monks to their convent where we 
had refection. ‘The others were lodged in the vast hospital of Saint 
John, and there sufficient victuals were given them. God knew how 
weary they all were. The next morning all the pilgrims were sum- 
moned to Mount Sion to hear mass and the sermon. Regulars and sec- 
ulars each by devotion celebrated with great compunction. After the 
sermon there was a procession to Mount Sion. ‘Then the guardian 
invited all the pilgrims to dinner, and every one was seated, charitably 
and honourably served with abundance, and then we all went in very 
noble guise to the church to return thanks. After vespers, we spent 
the time in contemplating the holy places.’’ It appears that they pro- 
ceeded to visit each of the holy places in solemn procession, each car- 
rying a lighted taper, and a sermon was pronounced at each station. 


AGES OF FAITH. 241 


Every year the good duke Philippe, of Burgundy, used to give 1000 
ducats in compassion and devotion for the support of the true Christians 
there serving God. ‘That night after the procession, they remained in 
the holy sepulchre; the first part of the night was spent in confession, 
and after midnight the masses were said in order, some on the holy 
sepulchre, others in it, and others on Mount Calvary. Lastly, the 
Bishop of Cambray sung high mass with great solemnity, and many 
received the holy communion, and then each went about according to 
his devotion, and at eight o’clock in the morning the gates were opened, 
and the pilgrims returned to the hospital or to their brethren. «On the 
Assumption of our Lady, we went at midnight to chant at the holy 
sepulchre, in the crypt of the church at Josaphat; and then returned to 
high mass on Mount Sion, where she died. «Tout ce jour se passa en 
contemplation.” On going to visit the church of St. George near Rama, 
there were about sixty pilgrims, and the greatest part of them English- 
men. Horrible are the exactions and insolences of the Moors. One 
pilgrim was moved to strike a Turk, for which he was near forfeiting 
his hand. <‘ Pourtant Pélerins soyez tous enclins 4 tout endurer toutes 
les injures, griefs ou forfaictures au nom de Jesus, ear il endura.’ ‘Che 
poor Franciscan friars at Jerusalem live most virtuous and holy lives 
amidst these Sarassins and heretics.” 

The details on his return may be given in few words. For once he 
indulges in a poetic tale. ‘From the top of Mount Sinai,” says he, 
‘you behold a region stretching to the Red Sea, and in this plain there 
is a monastery of holy men, but no one can discern the way toit. You 
hear the bells toll: and some, it is said, have reached it, but none have 
ever returned, ‘The monks of St. Catharine have gone in search of it, 
and have heard the bells, but have never succeeded.” During this pas- 
sage of the deserts of Mount Sinai, they seem to have carried a portable 
altar, so that mass used to be said even amidst those vast solitudes. 
‘On returning, while at sea, on the night of the 12th of September, 
trespassed a noble knight, who had received the order of knighthood at 
Jerusalem. He was doctor in utroque, and named Master Symon, a 
gracious man and wise. God pardon him. And on the 16th inst. at 
six o’clock in the morning, trespassed a seigneur of the Church, sub- 
deacon of Angers, named Messire Gilles, a native of Brittany, a man 
of great virtue, and full of good manners. Jesus be propitious to him 
and to us all!’’ At lengh, after a long and stormy passage from Alex- 
andria, they arrived at Modoust, a city on the coast of Achaia; and now 
their long desire of hearing mass was gratified. Entrez en la cite on 
alla 4 la messe tres fort desiree a ouyr, car de long temps on ny avoit 
este. 

Such is the style of a pilgrim’s narrative; such were the sufferings 
and woes he had to endure: and yet a far deeper source of mourning to 
him was found in the reflections of philosophy, which were excited by 
what he had seen in journeying to the Holy Land. «O subject worthy 
of tears and bitter sighs ! (exclaims Nicole) that these beautiful countries 
of the East, once so carefully cultivated by the holy apostles, should be 
now subverted and lost! Ah! who can think without groans of Asia 
and Africa, which had such noble churches, which heard a St. Augus- 
tin, a Chrysostom, a Cyprian, an Athanasius, a Cyrill, a St. John Da- 

Vor. II.—31 4s 


242 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


mascene, a Gregory Nicene, a Gregory Nazianzen, a Basil of Cesarea, 
and so many other great bishops? Helas Lucifer trebuscha du ciel a 
mis son siege present en orient. En orient sont les tenebres de peche 
qui ont tout aveugle et n’y voit on que l’ymaige de mort.”” They have 
broken unity, they have been rebellious to the see of Peter, to whom 
Jesus said, ‘* Thou art called a rock; and on this rock will I build my 
Church:’’ and therefore, without doubt, those who are disobedient to 
this mother and mistress of the faith, fall into the guilt of heresy. St. 
Ambrose in his time said, he wished to follow the Roman Church in all 
things ; so said St. Jerome at the time of the Arian heresy; so said St. 
Ireneus in the apostolic age; so say all good Christians: for where the 
body is, there will be the eagles: where is the chief, there will be the 
members. But the inhabitants of the East have left the ark, and there- 
fore is their glory perished: ‘*quiconques mangera laignel hors de 
l’Eglise Sainct Pierre necessairement est prophane.”’ 

These wise pilgrims of the middle age, who had found in the East 
Mahometans, Greek schismatics, Syrians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Abba- 
sins, and Eutychians, had meditated on the difficulty which is now so 
often adduced, founded on the variety of religions, and the comparative 
smallness of the number who hold the true faith: but the result of their 
observations only led to reflections which confirmed their faith. This 
poor brother Nicole, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, pursued 
the same argument from analogy which has been so well developed by 
later philosophers; and he shows that the same difficulty presents itself 
in the natural world, with respect to things noble and base, where the 
phenomena of external nature would lead to the same reflection on the 
wide existence of evil, as a fact which did not admit of being denied. 
Happiness, wisdom, and virtue, are not given to all men. Every kind 
of excellence is comparatively rare and precious, and we must be pre- 
pared, therefore, for finding that such is the case respecting that highest 
of all excellences, which consists in the splendour and eternal felicity 
of souls that attain to final beatification and glory. And, after all, he 
argues that we should be slow either to excuse or to condemn. We 
cannot presume either upon the innocence or the guilt of erring men. 
Negligence of inquiry and the evidences of our faith are great; and 
therefore, the ignorance of many must needs be highly sinful: and the 
apostle says, that the unknowing shall be unknown. God will never 
desert those who sincerely turn their hearts to him. And if any sedu- 
cer, under the habit or name of a Catholic doctor, should preach to any 
simple creature any error, and the simple ignorant creature should be- 
lieve it to be Catholic truth, in turning himself to God totally, he will 
be preserved, and his heart shall not be suffered to incline to folly: for 
David says that God will guard those who love him. But the under- 
standing of men is created for the embracing of holy and salutary truth, 
and negligence here is no doubt worthy of damnation ; and as every 
thing tends easily to its natural end, so our natural intellectual virtue is 
more near to find God than it is to find his contrary. For God is always 
ready to aid those who seek him with a good and honest heart; and thus 
we find that Cornelius, though a Pagan, yet living religiously and fear- 
ing God, St. Peter was sent to convert him and all his family.“ Il est 
a croire totalement que jamais Dieu ne laissa ceux qui veullent adherer 


AGES OF FAITH. 243 


a luy diligentement.’”’ And therefore, all error that receives damnation 
springs from malice. <‘ L’homme n’est pas moins tenu a Dieu des ope- 
rations de l’entendement que des operations de sa volonte ou affections.” 
And there are laws to regulate his will and affections, and therefore we 
may be sure that there are laws to fix limits to his understanding, to 
determine what he should believe, and what he should not believe; and 
therefore ignorance is damnable, for they ought to believe what they do 
not: and they ought curiously to inquire what are these laws. Whereas 
the multitude run with all their strength to sin and death as their end; 
and it is not strange, therefore, that they should find it. And we know 
that the justice as well as the mercy of God will be the subject of eter- 
nal admiration and joy to the just in heaven. And the first and great 
cause of all these errors is negligence of inquiry, and the second is aver- 
sion to believe what ought to be believed of God, and a hatred for the 
things that would enlighten and convert the soul; and if they will not 
heed either holy words or miracles, it is not strange that they remain in 
error; and another cause is the folly and presumption of men in suppos- 
ing that their natural understanding is able to comprehend the mysteries 
of faith, and another cause is the abuse of the Scriptures, and another 
cause is a sensual life, like that of the Epicureans.* 

These are the sorrowful and profound reflections, suggested to the | 
traveller of the middle ages, by what was seen on the journey to the 
Holy Land. 'The reader will now pass on with a still more full convie- 
tion, that the pilerim was indeed a mourner. 

But there is another side, from which we must contemplate the mourn- 
ing of men in ages of faith, which will place us in the presence of scenes 
of great sublimity, yet not without the charm of a profound tenderness, 
We are come where I have said we should see the departure of exiles to 
their country, amidst the mourning of friends who remain behind. The 
approach must not intimidate us, though we should be at first confronted 
with a tribe like that which Dante beheld, that came along the hollow 
vale, in silence weeping. Let us imagine that we behold some reverend 
stranger, with finger lifted, placed against his lips. This will suffice to 
warn us, that we may enter as the spot requires—silent and devout. 
a ee ee ee ee ee ee ee Tne eee en ee 

* F, 40—44, 


244 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


CHAPTER VI. 


‘‘Tr I were a maker of books,” says Montaigne, «I would compose a 
register of different deaths, with a commentary: for whoever would teach 
men how to die, would teach them how to live.’ It is not merely devo- 
tion that is interested in this theme; history itself must acknowledge its 
importance: for, as the same philosopher observes, ‘‘ death is the most 
remarkable action of human life. It is the master-day—the day that 
judges all the others.” The path which we are pursuing, leads us 
necessarily within view of death, towards which we must turn our eyes, 
For though the nature of death is changed since the accomplishment of 
man’s redemption, it is still the punishment which God has left to be 
inflicted upon sin; and whether considered in relation to nature or to 
grace, it is an event which involves mourning of one sort or other, ac- 
cording to the spirit with which it is received, or the previous prepara- 
tion which may have been made against it. Men of the modern school, 
indeed, seem practically to consider this whole subject of death as one, 
independent of a scientific observation of the progress of the physical 
malady, beneath the attention of philosophers. Viewing it merely as 
the dissolution of organs, the decomposition of a worn-out machine, 
which is incapable any longer of being subservient to animal existence, 
as an extinction of the powers of life, either through the nervous system 
constituting death by syncope, or through the circulation in the arteries 
of a different kind of blood, causing death by asphyxia,—in other words, 
examining it merely with the eyes of a physician, it is not strange that 
they should be insensible to the high moral grandeur which so often dis- 
tinguishes the closing scene of mortal life, or that they should be sur- 
prised and offended at the importance which religion ascribes to this last 
act in the combat of her children. Far differently, it may be remarked, 
did the monarch of sublimest song estimate the dignity of the human 
struggle, when, in the concluding scene of the Iliad, he represents the 
two heroes of Greece and Troy at length confronted with each other ; 
when all mortal beholders are dissolved in tears and horror, and celestial 
powers prepare to join in the conflict; when even the King of gods looks 
down from his high throne of heaven, to sympathize in the dangers of 
great unhappy men, to pity their dreadful labours, and to raise at last 
that awful balance, which is to determine their irrevocable doom.* 

I have said that the nature of death is changed since Christ dried up 
the fountain of tears by his resurrection: and this is a fact to which the 
history of the ages of faith bears such remarkable testimony, that if 
there were no other object in consulting it but merely to examine that 
testimony, there would be no hazard in affirming that the result would 
be more than sufficient to compensate for any labour that the inquiry 
might have occasioned ; fully justifying the opinion, that the study of 
no other period of the history of man can present so rich and solemn a 
spectacle for the instruction and correction of the human race. When 
we first set out upon this track, I observed, that men could not with any 
rinsed ck Ser een an al i a 

* Tl. xxii. 168 


AGES OF FAITH. 245 


justice accuse religion, or the history of the ages of faith, of leading 
them through dark and gloomy ways, which they might have avoided 
with other guides: and here I must repeat that remark; for it is not 
religion, but nature, which obliges all men, sooner or later, to be fami- 
liarised with the image of death. Nature takes care that even in youth 
they should be taught to feel its reality: and oh! if the heart be left to 
nature, how bitter, how terrible, is that stern lesson! Infinite is the 
youthful mourning consequent upon the first experience of the changea- 
bleness of earthly things, which, to the inexperienced mind, comes so 
necessarily, so unavoidably, that changeableness of things so closely 
and invariably interwoven with individual existence. A first announce- 
ment of death is a rent which is never forgotten, but which remains 
afflicting the soul like a night spectre, unless faith should change it into 
a joyful desire of that day, which will summon us to a securer world, 
and to a more consoling knowledge.* ‘¢ Here,”’ as a great French wri- 
ter observes, ‘‘ there is no need of consulting history. The Muse of 
sorrow is of every age. Who is ignorant of the funeral chant? Who 
has not followed to the grave some tender beloved relation, and felt the 
secret fall of that one pearly drop, which, from the manly eye, more 
than a flood of tears, bears witness to the affection with which a son _ 
can love his mother ?” 

The ancients, notwithstanding their superstitious language, seemed 
to have had a passion for dwelling on the thought of death, and of its 
necessity. Pindar makes it enter into the definition of man: for, speak- 
ing of the human race, he says, ‘¢ Those to whom death is inevitable.’’ 
The heroic world, indeed, had its boastful eloquence to reconcile men 
to this king of terrors. What madness to repine at death! What com- 
plaint is this? 

<< dydece Oynray tovrety mares mrememtvoy tion, 
a eerete Bavarcso duonyéos teavarvoae st 
And yet this mortality, this fate, this death, how must they have been, 
to the feelings of nature, replete with images of terror, fearful, revolting, 
horrible! ‘To these unhappy men, with nothing to assist their frailty, 
death could not have appeared more amiable than it did to Adam, when 
he beheld, with looks of dismay, its first victim.— 
** But have I now seen death? Is this the way 
I must return to native dust? O sight 


Of terror, foul and ugly to behold, 
Horrid to think, how horrible to feel !” 


Milton makes it an object of horror to the angel: 


«« ________ Death thou hast seen 

In his first shape on man: but many shapes 

Of death, and many are the ways that lead 

To his grim cave, all dismal.” 
Since the Son of God endured it on the cross, such language would not 
only be unworthy of an angel’s tongue, but, without recurring to what 
is related of Spartan fortitude, it would argue ignorance and pusillanim- 
ity inaboy. The author of the Martyrs describes the image of death 
as it appeared after the great fulfilment of primeval prophecy. ‘One 


* Novalis Schriften, i. 24. ‘ t Il. xvi. 441. 
Vv 


246 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


hand of the skeleton, (he says) holds a scythe like a mower; with the 
other it attempts to hide the only wound that it has ever received, that 
which Christ inflicted upon it, when he conquered on the top of Gol- 
gotha.’’* Cruel enemy! well may it seek to hide that wound which 
has destroyed its sting irremediably. Unlike the formidable conqueror 
which it once hoped to be, only the weak and wicked can it affright or 
injure. We are so constituted, indeed, that this crisis naturally impres- 
ses every one with a feeling of awe. The pinched and pallid features, 
the cold, clammy skin, the heaving, laborious, rattling respiration, and 
the irresistible force of that disease which no earthly remedies can over- 
come, speak of something appalling, and suggest the idea of an Almigh- 
ty Power manifesting displeasure and inflicting punishment. Yet this 
is not the language which they speak to the Christian observer. He 
sees these formidable symptoms only as the means or the consequences 
of good. In the midst of all this apparent confusion, he can see much 
that he can understand, indicating the counsel and foresight of a wise 
and good Creator, by whom the progress and elevation of the human 
species is an object of constant care. Death, though something foreign 
from the original order of the natural world, has been converted into an 
agent of mercy: it has become homogeneous with the laws and consti- 
tion of a pure and innocent creation: it forms part of that great scheme, 
of which every discoverable purpose is marked with beneficence as well 
as wisdom. Death is still endured by the saints; for, as St. Augustin 
observes, there could be no faith, if immortality of the body were to be 
the immediate consequence of the sacrament of regeneration ; but, by 
the wondrous grace of our Saviour, the penalty of sin is changed, so as 
to serve justice. Formerly it was said, ‘‘ You shall die if you trans- 
gress ;’’ but now it is said, ‘‘ Die rather than transgress.”? Thus, by 
the ineffable mercy of God, the punishment of vice becomes the armour 
of virtue, and the just gain merit, where the sinner found his doom.t 
‘Those penmen whom the Holy Spirit moved, in many a passage of their 
sacred book, predict or attest this admirable manifestation of our Crea- 
tor’s love. ‘They speak of death as being henceforth amiable in the 
eyes of men, sanctified in the estimation of angels, precious in the sight 
of God. ‘ Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors sanctorum ejus.”? Their 
death is precious: it is their nativity: the entrance to rest, the exit to 
glory. And who can justly estimate the wondrous change which is 
here made manifest? Consider what poor consolation for the human 
heart was supplied in those eloquent treatises by ancient philosophers, 
which they entitled ‘‘ De Contemnenda Morte,” in which it is so grave- 
ly discussed whether death be an evil. And if they are so unsatisfac- 
tory when read in health, notwithstanding all the brilliancy and magic 
of their style, what must they have been if proposed to the dying, with 
the hope of dissipating the terrors of their departure? But since the 
Orient from on high hath visited the race of men, there is no longer 
occasion for engaging in such discussions, or for endeavouring to inspire 
contempt for that which is no longer an object of terror. During the 
ages of faith, the Catholic vision, the Catholic idea, that which shed a 
lustre over the whole course of human life, which consoled and exalted 


* Lib. viii. + De Civit. Dei, lib. xiii. 4. 


AGES OF FAITH. 247 


the mind in every vicissitude, and in every stage of the mortal course, 
that which determined the direction of all the intellectual faculties, and 
the whole shape of men’s conceptions, that which alone gave a charm 
to prosperity and a value to existence, that vision had nothing to fear 
from the prospect of death. Unlike every thing that is subjected to 
human perception, it ended not there, but led on the soul to that passage, 
and enabled it to depart full of joy and confidence: while to the human 
philosopher, without the supernatural light and consolations of faith, 
every thing dear to his imagination, every thing interwoven with his 
mental habits, and with the very constitution of his heart, seems to end 
for ever, when he is clad in clay. ‘In death,’”’ says Durandus, «“ we 
pass from one Church to another, from the militant to the triumphant 
Church.’’* ‘For the just,” says another holy writer, ‘natural death 
is only a passage from God to God, from one Paradise to another Para- 
dise.”’t By the passion of our Saviour Christ, death was sanctified, 
death was become a holy and a blessed thing, a means of imitating Je- 
sus, and of entering upon eternal life. St. Basil says, ‘‘'The nature of 
sadness is changed since the cross of Christ. At first the death of the 
saints was honoured with lamentation and tears, but now, we rejoice at 
the death of the saints, for we believe it to be the passage to a better 
life.” 

Death, in the middle ages, had quite a different character from that in 
which it appears to Nature’s eye. Who has not made this remark on 
beholding those ancient paintings which represent dying men, like those 
of Le Sueur exhibiting the death of St. Bruno? What a placid smile 
on the countenance of the returning exile! With what peaceful rever- 
ence and wonder do the brethren stand or kneel round him! See that 
humble monk, who stands at a distance with clasped hands, on whose 
face one may read unutterable thoughts of love, so calmly regarding him 
as his spirit passes, while another still holds up the crucifix to his 
fading eye, though, by his attitude, turning round to those behind him, 
he seems to ask for assent to his own opinion, that he is already gone. 
‘The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death 
shall not touch them.”’ Here are no bitter lamentations, or wringing of 
hands, or tearing of the hair, 

“ Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair.” 

St. Ambrose wrote a Treatise «On the Advantages of Death,”’ in 
which he shows the happiness of dying, because death has nothing ter- 
rible in itself, and is a deliverance from snares and sin. ‘+ With faith to 
enlighten you,” say the philosophers of the middle age, «* why fear 
death, which to you should appear only as a higher revelation of life ? 
How many things do men voluntarily undertake, which are more pain- 
ful and distressing than the act of death? Compare it with the setting 
out on a long and toilsome journey, alone, without friends, leaving all 
who are dear and familiar to you, going among strangers, where there 
will be no one to welcome you; and all this merely, perhaps, to satisfy 


* Durandi Rationale, lib. iv. cap. 6. 
T L. P. Judde, GEuvres Spirituelles, tom. ii. 2° 


248 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


vanity, and with the hope of gain! What sleepless nights, what fa- 
tiguing days, what profane and disgusting associates by the way, what 
interminable troubles and interruptions, perhaps amidst wars and civil 
tumults and persecutions of the Church. Compare death to this. You 
are at home, in the bosom of relations and friends, with those you love 
around you; no cares to trouble you, no solicitude; you are going a 
journey of necessity, a journey sanctified by the Saviour, and by the 
passage of all God’s holy saints ; a journey you must accomplish if you 
would be with that which you seek, if you would follow where all that 
is amiable and good is fled: whither all your hopes are gone before: 
where, perhaps, you will have father, mother, sisters, brethren, and 
saints, to welcome you: where you will find the friends of your child- 
hood and youth, and where all your troubles will be at an end. ‘Hee 
peregrinatio mediocris vobis videri potest?” Why linger, why turn 
back, why shrink or fear to depart from earth’s shadows, which change 
and pass so quickly? How different the length of the two ways! 
How tedious, and difficult, and painful the one! how short, and easy, 
and calm the other! You fall asleep,—and when you awake, perhaps 
you find yourself in your country. You closed your eyes upon a 
flickering taper, and you may open them to behold Heaven’s light which 
will for ever shine. The last sounds you heard were the prayers of 
some priest, feeble and worn down with his labours in this valley of 
tears, perhaps the mourning of nature struggling with faith, the longings 
of desire, the sighs of the dove, and now you hear joyful hallelujahs 
and the music of exulting angels. ‘+ Let us reflect from time to time,” 
says St. Cyprian, ‘* that we have renounced the world, and that we live 
here below as guests and strangers. What man, obliged to dwell in a 
foreign land, would not strain every nerve to return to his native coun- 
try? What traveller journeying homeward, does not pray to heaven for 
a favourable wind, that he may the sooner embrace his dear parents ? 
Our country is Heaven. We have for fathers first, the patriarchs. Why 
do we not hasten, why do we not run to behold our country and to 
salute our parents? A vast number of friends are waiting for us, a 
crowd of relations, of brethren and children, sure of their own salvation 
and only anxious for ours, desire nothing but to behold us united to 
them for ever. What joy for us to meet them again and to embrace 
them! What a pleasure to die without fear! What profound and per- 
petual felicity to live in eternity!’’ ‘All my hope is in death. I die 
of regret that I cannot die,”’ says St. Theresa in her celebrated glose 
after communion, and the effusion of beatific light seen but in a vision, 
made the poet of the ages of faith exclaim, 
** Whoso laments that we must doff this garb 
Of frail mortality, thenceforth to live 


Immortally above; he hath not seen 
The sweet refreshing of that heavenly shower.” * 


But methinks I hear some one reply, to die young is surely a calam- 
ity to be deplored even by the most spiritual? Indeed, what new doc- 
trine is this to be delivered by men professing wisdom? Bacchus was 
for deciding against Auschylus merely because in one verse he repre- 


* Dante’s Parad. xiv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 249 


sented death as the greatest of evils;* and the fable of Silenus, alluded 
to by Cicero, conveys the deepest conviction of the ancient world, who, 
when he was taken by Midas, is said to have given for his ransom this 
lesson, ‘that it was the best thing for man not to be born, and that the 
next best was to die as soon as possible ;’’t the latter part of which sen- 
tence must remind every one of what is read in the sacred scriptures, 
that Enoch pleased God, and appeared no more, because God took him 
away.{ ‘It was because he pleased God,”’ says St. Cyprian, “that he 
was transported far from the contagion of the world.” 

‘In the ages of faith, he who was to be dxymogirares dara,” as Thetis 
says of her son,|| ‘would not have been regarded as unhappy.”? In 
fable, indeed, a mighty king is made to exclaim, ‘‘haa mort villaine! 
comment as tu este si hardie dassailir un tel homme comme estoit mon 
nepueu qui de bonte passoit tout le monde.’ Yet not Orcus, as Eurip- 
ides says, but Heaven seemed to have greater glory when the youthful 
died.§ As far as relates to the thought of an untimely death, faith and 
reason clear, had undeceived men. Whether their flesh parted shriv- 
elled from them, or whether they died when the cheek was first clothed 
in down, or before the coral and the pap were left, the difference was to 
eternity compared, ‘a briefer space, than is the twinkling of an eye to 
the heaven’s slowest orb.”’ But death in years of boyish innocence, 
even to nature’s eye, was not a hideous or a fearful spectacle. What 
tender and even lovely scenes were those in which occurred the death 
of a St. Stanislas, or a St. Louis Gonzaga. ‘I die without reluctance, 
I die full of joy, though the gifts of youth are mine to make life grate- 
ful to me.”” There was here, enough to make men exclaim, ‘ Death! 
death! O amiable lovely death !” 

The heroic spirit of the scholastic romantic ages would not disdain to 
urge the motive which Achilles adduces to reconcile the youthful son 
of Priam to meet death. 

"ADAM iroc, Save nat od" Thy dropdecet obras 5 
Kartave x2t Taregoxroc, ome oto mronady Gercelvav, 
Ov, cedac, cies naps xarde Te pepas Te; 

Tlareos J” elu’ dyabcio, Ser Je me pelvaro penrnp’ 

"Arn? Et rot nak euch Savaros ual Molex xearasi,** 


Why do you repine at death? Are not these dead in the flower of 
youth and beauty, cut off from beloved friends and brothers, from sweet 
and holy studies, from that golden world which is made joyful by piety 
and innocence, and yet did they not die with resignation and even with 
delight? Die then like them, and exult to follow such bright examples. 
For the generality of men to die young, was known to be, on every ac- 
count, an excellent lot. ‘* Priam,’’ as Callimachus remarks, « wept 
much oftener than Troilus ;”’ and in relation to spiritual good, Henry 
Suso observes, ‘that for the most part, with age sins are increased, and 
that you will find far more who become worse than who become better. 
Our blessed Saviour chose not to protract his life beyond the flower, and 
it was an Antipope who prolonged his usurpation beyond the years of 
Peter.’’tt Men never leave the world with such becoming grace as 


* Aristoph. Rane, 1393. t Tuscul. i. 45. + Gen. v. 24, | Il. i. 505. 
§ Alcestis. +d) xxi 106. ++ Called by some Benedict XIII. 
Vor. 11.—32 


250 MORES CATHOLIC; OR, 


when young; as when they seem to make death proud with pure and 
princely beauty. ‘To die young seems like a genuine heroic act. «Love 
is sweetest in death: for one who loves, death is a mystery of sweet 
mysteries ; it is a bridal night,” to use the expression of Novalis.* If it 
be the most beautiful art and gift, as the Greek poet says, 


eunreus Aurely Biav, t 


then assuredly we should die young. In the death of youth there is 

nothing hideous or revolting, but only a most sweet solemn form of love- 

liness. In allusion to her death, Beatrice speaks thus to Dante :— 
—————— “never didst thou spy 

In art or nature, ought so passing sweet 


As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame, 
Enclos’d me, and are scatter’d now in dust.” 


The death of youth, the striking down of these fair flowers, was often 
made the occasion of eternal good to men, by converting their hearts toa 
love of God. Adverting to this, Beatrice continued to admonish Dante: 

“If sweetest thing thus failed thee with my death, 
What, afterwards, of mortal, should thy wish 
Have tempted? When thou first hadst felt the dart 
Of perishable things, in my departing 
For better realms, thy wing thou should’st have prun’d 
To follow me; and never stoop’d again 
To bide a second blow.’’+ 


In the middle ages, men were conversant with what Frederick Schle- 
gel terms ‘‘the beautiful side of death.” They marked that full and 
perfect consciousness, that peculiar clearness and almost foresight which 
so frequently attend the soul in her last moments previous to departure, 
to which Shakspeare alludes in these lines: 


*“O, but they say, the tongues of dying men 
Enforce attention, like deep harmony.” 


They marked that courage with which she prepares to enter upon anew 
sphere, upon regions that never saw man that could after measure back 
his course,|| that higher clearness in hope and faith, nay, even that ex- 
pression of countenance which indicates a change to bliss, when they 
beheld with astonishment, a sweet melancholy smile steal over the face, 
like that which comes upon a sleeping child.§ The emblematical figure 
which is placed at the end of the sentence which this great Catholic phi- 
losopher was prevented from finishing by death, is quite in accordance 
with this view, and furnishes a striking contrast to the designs of that 
detested triumph which employed the pencil of the Basle Painter. It 
represents a beautiful figure with extended wings, and holding with out- 
stretched arms, the rings and links of a broken chain. It flies upwards 
through the serene air, as if it had just escaped, and the globe of this 
earth is seen below, half enveloped in clouds, while an eye at the sum- 
mit of the picture indicates the seat of God, towards which it is ascend- 
ing. St. Charles Borromeo ordered a painter to substitute the golden 
key of Paradise for the skeleton and scythe by which an artist had rep- 


* Schriften, ii. 312. + Eurip. Heraclid. 534, + Parad. xxxi. 
|| Dant. Purg. i. § Philosophie der Sprache, 112. 


AGES OF FAITH. 251 


resented death. In the chronicles of the middle ages, we read of many 
who made a swan-like end, fading in music, who died, as the poet says, 
‘‘like a dolphin, whom each pang imbues 


“ With a new color as it gasps away, 
The last still loveliest, ’till ’tis gone.” 


So Shakspeare says of one who had passed from this world, « nothing 
in his life became him like the leaving it: he died as one that had been 
studied in his death.” 

‘Speaking accurately and strictly,” says Frederick Schlegel, «« accord- 
ing to this Christian view of life, there is no such thing as death, but 
only a change of life and its passing form. ‘There is no death in nature, 
that is to say, death is not essential and original, but it has been intro- 
duced into the creation subsequently and by accident. For men, the 
immortality of the soul, and the idea of this immortality form not so 
much an article of faith and of the highest hope, as a real phenomenon 
of nature, an unquestionable matter of fact, which is attested by all his- 
tory.”* «To die,”? says Novalis, ‘is a genuine philosophic act.’ 
He alludes probably to that saying of the Pythagoreans, ‘that in three 
modes man could render himself better, by converse with the gods, by 
doing good to others, and by dying, which was the total separation of 
the soul from the body.”{ But whatever may be thought of this spec- 
ulation, we may appropriate to ourselves the sentence, and say, in refer- 
ence to death in the middle ages, that «to die was a genuine religious 
act ;’’ an act converted by the spirit of resignation and of love for Christ 
from a natural necessity, to be the voluntary offering of a devout and 
obedient heart. It must, however, be carefully remarked, that this 
“beautiful side of death” is connected essentially with the Catholic 
form of life. It is the manners and customs of the impious city which 
make sickness and death horrible. 'To the quiet retirement and contem- 
plation of nature, to the charity and spirit of obedience to God in which 
the Catholic was accustomed to pass his days, the silence of the sick 
room was no contrast; he had learned to live alone without visits, with- 
out cares, without political debates, and without flattery ; but from a 
perpetual tumult of pleasures or business, with some constant external 
excitement, the transition to it was undoubtedly something as dismal to 
the imagination as the idea of death itself to the natural eye. And this 
leads me to notice the objection which some may advance, who, though 
willing to admit that the act of death may have been stript of terror, 
cannot conceive how the passage to it through a long sickness could ever 
have been any thing but a fearful and unmixed calamity. Unquestiona- 
bly it belongs not to the principles of the true philosophy to imitate that 
stoical indifference which affected to deny that the sufferings of the body 
were an evil, or to adopt, as St. Augustin says, ‘the proud error of 
those who attribute to the strength of the human will that constancy 
which is derived from the Divine assistance.’’ «There are but few,’’ 
says that holy doctor, ** who are not punished in this life but only after 
it, The evils of diseases in the body are so numerous, that they can- 
not be all described even in the books of the physicians. Who does 
aE MEMENE Heiser IRUSEE Ce foreer Never Tn CLE te ee 

* Philosophie der Sprache, 269. t Schriften ii. 142, 

+ Anonym. de Vita Pythagore. 


252 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


not shudder at the bare recital of them? Life itself begins with weep- 
ing, for Zoroaster alone is said to have laughed when he was born, which 
monstrous act portended no good to this inventer of magical arts, who 
found them of no avail even to preserve the vain happiness of the pres- 
ent life from the power of his enemies, since he was conquered by Ni- 
nus, king of the Assyrians. ‘Grave jugum super filios Adam a die exi- 
tus de ventre matris eorum, usque in diem sepulture in matrem omnium.’ 
And yet such is the mercy of God towards the vessels of mercy, that 
even from this yoke of the present life, the grace of our Saviour Christ, 
in a great measure delivers them,”’* though not wholly, lest religion 
should only be loved for the sake of temporal advantages. What, let us 
ask, was sickness to members of the city of God during these supernat- 
ural ages? Like every other condition to which mortal life was subject, 
it had experienced the mysterious and gladdening influence of the clori- 
ous light of faith. Sickness now disproved the definition of a happy 
man, as given by Metrodorus; for like death, it was become amiable, 
sanctified, and precious ; it belonged to the condition not of wretched, 
but of blessed mourners; it was a holy condition full of instruction, full 
of peace; it was solitude, meditation, repose; it was the life of blessed 
eremites and of men perfect. 

Hear how a writer of the middle ages speaks to the sick. ‘We are 
commanded to weep with those who weep, and Jesus himself wept. 
Disobedience is inhumanity. I will weep therefore lest I should be dis- 
obedient and inhuman, and not an imitator of my Jesus. You are Op- 
pressed with sickness, my sweet son; you are perhaps about to go the 
way of all flesh. But whither? to life. By what way? You cannot 
err: the way is Christ. You cannot be deceived: Christ is truth. You 
cannot but live: Christ is life. But, beloved, confession and penance 
are necessary that you may be in perfect charity. The love of your 
neighbour worketh no evil. What shall I say of the love of God? 
These are the two wings with which you must fly to heaven. Love 
God and God will love you. Love God and you will love whatever he 
loves, whatever he sends you. Do you suffer from a cough, from inflam- 
mation, from weakness of stomach, from any of the innumerable diseases 
to which our frame is subject? These are the gifts of God. These are 
his chastisements for your good; condemn them not, but revere and love 
Him who, as a Father, corrects you not in anger but in mercy. O with 
what a joyful heart ought you to hail the Divine visitation, the spiritual 
remedy, the antidote to the sting of death! Lift up your heart to God 
and say, ‘Tu es spes mea, Deus meus: diffido de meis meritis, sed 
confido de miserationibus tuis: et plus confido de tuis miserationibus, 
quam diffidam de malis actibus meis. In manus tuas commendo spiri- 
tum meum.’’’t St. Chrysostom writes as follows to Olympias and says, 
‘Do not suppose that you lead an idle, useless life for your salvation, 
when sickness confines you at home attached to your bed. What you 
support is above what they suffer who are delivered to the executioners. 
‘In vestra patientia possidebitis animas vestras.’ He does not say,” 
adds St. Augustine, ‘your villas, your honours, your luxuries, your 


* De Civitate Dei, lib. xxi, 14. xxii. 22. 
ft De Visitatione Infirmorum, lib. incerti auctoris. 


AGES OF FAITH, 253 


comforts, your health, but your souls; and if the soul can suffer, as is 
proved by experience, so many things for the sake of that by which it 
may perish, what ought it not to suffer that it may never perish? What 
ought it not to suffer, in order, by the tranquil endurance of pain and 
death, by a patient passion, to obtain the inestimable good of a happy 
immortality ?”’* ‘Jam egritudinem laudare, unam rem maxime detes- 
tabilem, quorum est tandem philosophorum,” says Cicero.t In fact, 
some of the ancient philosophers were able to discern the advantages 
which resulted from it, to the intellectual nature, and at least, in specu- 
lation to forestall the judgment of those happier sages, who directed 
their discipline to temper and moderate those excessive energies of the 
body which tended, by their full development, to weaken and impair the 
higher faculties. ‘*’The sickness of a certain friend,” says Pliny, ‘+ gave 
me occasion lately to remark, that we are the best men when we are 
infirm. For when does avarice or lust solicita sick man? He has no 
thought of pleasure ; he does not seek honour, he neglects riches; then 
he remembers that there are Gods and that he is a man; he envies no 
one ; he admires no one; he despises no one; and he neither attends 
to malignant conversation nor is he nourished by it.”’*t ‘These were a 
heathen’s reflections, but the Christian had far greater and holier consid- 
erations to cheer his hours of sickness. ‘* Let a wise man be brave in 
enduring pain; that is sufficient for the discharge of duty. That he 
should be joyful I do not require,’ continues Cicero, ‘‘ for unquestiona- 
bly it is asad thing, rough, bitter, hostile to nature, difficult to endure.””|| 
Yet faith enabled the Christian to find a source of satisfaction even in 
the pains of sickness, by reminding him that these supplied him with 
an opportunity of being more conformable to his divine Saviour. In 
health there were many distractions calculated to make him lose all simi- 
litude with that great prototype; but on the bed of suffering he lay 
stretched like the blessed Jesus on the cross, and in the offering up of 
these pains, he found a sweetness and a consolation that surpassed all 
the exhilaration and joy of the most vigorous health, ‘* as much,” to 
use the words of St. Augustin, ‘‘ as the wisdom of Job in sickness ex- 
ceeded that of Adam in the strength and freshness of youth wandering 
in the groves.”” This was a phenomenon which suggested many reflec- 
tions to men of philosophic observation, though, in their speculations, 
they too often overlooked the real secret cause of this mystery of the 
moral nature. The testimony to the fact which is borne by Novalis, is 
assuredly remarkable, when he says, ‘‘the moment in which a man 
begins to love sickness or pain is perhaps that in which the sweetest 
pleasure is-in his arms, and the highest positive delight runs through 
him. May not sickness be a medium of higher synthesis? The more 
fearful the pain, the higher the secret pleasure. Every sickness is, per- 
haps, a necessary beginning of the inward union of the two existences, 
a necessary beginning of love. Hence men can become enthusiastic for 
sickness and pain, and, above all, for death, as a closer union of the two 
existences. In general, do not the best things begin with sickness ? 
Half of sickness is evil, the whole sickness is pleasure ?’’§ 


* De Patientia. + Tuscul. iv. 25. { Epist. lib, viii. 26, 
| Tuscul. lib, ii. § Schriften ii. 287, 
Ww 


/ 


254 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


This passage, by a modern philosopher, would furnish an interesting 
commentary on what is related of many of the saints whose sentiments 
in sickness and death, are viewed with such contempt or incredulity by 
others of his religion who wanted the genius and penetration which he 
possessed. ‘I'he Spaniards have a saying, ‘‘ Where evil is, good is;’’ and 
these were occasions to demonstrate its truth. To the state of sickness 
in the ages of faith, there were certain duties and manners belonging, 
the observance of which gave rise to many lovely and astonishing scenes, 
which are described with beautiful simplicity in the ancient chronicles. 
The characteristics of the sick, like those of the dying, were changed, 
and wholly different from what they had been by nature. Like nectar 
now, men slowly sipped the most nauseous medicines, when they were 
reminded of the vinegar and gall. ‘The Nurse, in the Hippolytus, says, 
‘*Tt is better to be the sick person than the attendant,’ the latter had so 
much to endure from the waywardness and impatience of the sufferer.* 
What a different portrait was seen in an Abbot Stephen, a St. Philip 
Neri, a St. Clare, a St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi! What a different one 
was drawn by the poet who had the experience of Christian ages! 

“‘ He faded, and so calm and meek, 
So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 


So tearless, yet so tender-kind, 
And grieved for those he left behind.” 


How changed, too, were those who attended on the sick! It was in 
ages of faith that arose those institutes of mercy in which holy women, 
like ministering angels, devoted their lives to serve the sick. Such are 
those sisters of charity, and those gray sisters, who continue to perform 
so many miracles of charity in our unbelieving age. Men visited the 
sick now, not only through humanity and friendship, but as an act of 
devotion. ‘*I was sick, and ye visited me,’’ said our Lord, meaning, 
as he proceeded, to explain that whosoever would visit the least of his 
disciples in sickness would be recompensed hereafter as having visited 
him. Hence the sickness of the lowest attendant would be enough to 
reverse the plans of a whole family, and to interrupt the progress of a 
man in the highest authority. St. Gregory of Tours, describes his dis- 
tress, on one occasion, as he was travelling, and one of his younger at- 
tendants fell sick :—*‘ ‘This event involved us in great loss, for the sick- 
ness of this boy put a stop to our proceeding further on the journey. 
[ prayed earnestly to God that he might be healed; for he was always 
most patient of labour, and most pious.’’*t This help of intercession, 
so consoling to the sick, and often through Heaven’s mercy so instru- 
mental to their recovery, was never wanting in these ages of love. 
When Bayard was sick in Grenoble, the writer of his life relates, that 
every one was praying for his recovery. Not only his uncle, the bish- 
op, but also all the noble citizens and merchants, with all the holy reli- 
gious people, monks and nuns, interceded for him, day and night. He 
was soon restored to health. ‘* Et nest possible,’’ adds this devout wri- 
ter, ‘*quen tant de peuple ny eust quelque bonne personne que Dieu ne 
voulust ouyr.’’t 


* Eurip. 187. + 8S. Greg. Turon. Miracul. lib. ii. c. 66. 
+ La tres Joyeuse Hystoire, &c., chap. lv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 255 


Among the advantages of sickness, even in the romantic ages of chiv- 
alry, was considered its exemption from the danger of a disturbed and 
unsanctified death. ‘To the eye of religion, it would have been a hap- 
pier end for Bayard to have died of the distemper which attacked him in 
the Episcopal Palace of his holy uncle at Grenoble, than to have per- 
ished as he wished, with the Duke of Nemours, in the slaughter on 
Easter Sunday, at Ravenna. Aristotle, indeed, will not allow that cour- 
age can be evinced in sickness :* so that with that idea the young knight 
might hold it in abhorrence: but, yet, experience in any thing, as the 
Stagyrite admits, may give rise to courage; and, therefore, Socrates used 
to call courage knowledge; and, for the same reason, they who were 
acquainted with sickness and death might have had occasion to evince 
courage. 

With regard to physical sufferings, the deep and loving familiarity in 
which men lived with nature enabled them to perceive that sickness and 
the approach of death are not what people in health imagine them to be. 
‘* Nature, then,’ as Paschal says, ‘‘ gives passions and desires conforma- 
ble to the present state. It is the fear which we give ourselves, and not 
nature, which troubles us; because it joins to the state in which we are, 
the passions of the state in which we are not.”’t But let us now draw 
nearer to these mourners, and behold them stretched on the bed of sick- 
ness, that we may have proof that during the ages of faith their’s was 
truly a blessed sorrow. In the monastic histories, we have many scenes 
of this kind described in minute detail. ‘The author of that affecting 
book, which relates the deaths of certain monks of La Trappe, writes as 
if from the other world, for he had been sick almost to death, so as to 
have received the last sacraments of the Church; and he had made what 
he supposed his last discourse to the brethren, when it pleased God to 
delay his departure. He relates, that many of the monks of La Trappe 
had originally gone to that house of austere penitence, in a state of the 
greatest weakness and suffering of body, and had been admitted into it, 
from a conviction that they would give as much edification, by patience 
and resignation in their sickness, as others by the labours and exercises 
which belonged to those of robust health.t The father abbot of La 
Trappe asked brother Euthyme, whether he did not feel the solitude of 
the infirmary very wearisome, and whether he was not tired with having 
nothing to do? ‘To which he replied, «* My days seem very short. I 
pass them in prayer, in reading, and in working with my hands. Un 
chretien peut il s’ennuier?”’|| Yet these solitary men contemplated a 
state of real solitude, that which inevitably awaits the worldly race, with 
the utmost horror. Dom Isidore II., in his last sickness, said, on one 
occasion, to his brethren, ‘* How will a soul that has neglected its Judge, 
and which has chosen to serve the creature and not its Creator, be able 
to accommodate itself to that fearful solitude in which it will find itself 
at the hour of death?’ What nakedness! What dereliction! This soul, 
which reposed in the creature as its centre and its happiness, beholds 
itself all of a sudden abandoned and deprived of every support. It is not 


* Ethic. lib. iii. cap. 6. + Pensees 1, part. ix. 
t Relations de la Mort de Quelques Religieux de l’Abbaye de la Trappe, tom. ii. 147. 
| Id. tom. i. 102, 


256 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


sustained by God who has rejected it: neither is it by creatures, for they 
are without power to give it any succour. What a solitude! Whata 
void!”’** ‘The Abbot de Rancé says of Dom Paul Ferrand, when sick 
in the infirmary, ‘I used to visit him every morning at four o’clock. I 
used to find him on his knees saying his Breviary.”+ Dom Basile, in 
his last illness, though during severe cold, used to rise and say mass a 
little after four o’clock. So also Dom Isidore continued to hear mass 
every morning; and only two days before his death, he was able to hear 
it in the church without being supported.t 

In the middle ages, the sick had the consolation of being able to assist 
at the holy rites of the church till the last hour of their life. Hospitals 
were so constructed, that the patients who were in bed could each see 
the altar in the chapel; and those who were infirm in private houses 
were visited by the clergy, who were charged to administer this conso- 
lation to them. When sick persons were unable to leave their cham- 
ber, leave used to be given to say mass, even on the most solemn fes- 
tivals, in a private oratory.|| It was the custom also that the Psalms 
should be chaunted to every dying person, as may be collected from 
Morinus, the sacramentary of St. Eloy, and from other liturgical monu- 
ments: ‘*'The ministers of the holy church of God, with the utmost rev- 
erence, ought to sing before the sick every day, the office of vespers, 
matins, and lauds, with the antiphons, responses, lessons and prayers, 
pertaining to them.’’ St. Gregory of ‘Tours relates, that when St. Gall, 
Bishop of Arvernum, was at the point of death; just as the morning 
broke, he asked what was singing in the church? They said that they 
were singing the Benediction; and he, commencing with the fiftieth 
Psalm and the Benediction, proceeded to sing the whole office of matins. 
But we must proceed now to the consummation of earthly woe, to the 
last suffering of the blessed mourners. 


CHAPTER VII. 


«¢Wuen man,”’ said Simonides, ‘is in the sweet and precious flower 
of youth, having a light mind, he thinks of many unaccomplishable 
things: for he never supposes that he will either grow old or die; nor, 
when in health, has he any thought of sickness. Such is their foolish 
mind, nor do they know how short to mortals is the time of youth and 
life,”? 

Ovnriy J” open ris ayOos Ex wroaunearar Hus, 
Kovopov eycov Oumov moan’ arercora vee, 
ours pap earrid” exes yuerooesys oud Oaverrbat, 
Leche 3 SOME TINS SES TPIT OR eke eke ee a 


* Relations de la Mort de Quelques Religieux de l Abbaye de la Trappe, tom, aby 
; Id. 1, 32. + Id. ii. 138. || Benedict. XIV. de Sacrificio Misse, i. 24. 


AGES OF FAITH. 257 


did” vying Or” dv Hy peovrid” Exe xaparou. 
valor ravry usives yoos’ obde icacty 

ss xeoves €06" HGng uxt Biorau darizos 
Ovutets.* 

Were we to judge from the spirit and tone of the literature of the 
middle ages, we might suppose that these beautiful lines of the ancient 
poet had ceased to be a just representation of the human mind with 
regard to the remembrance and contemplation of death. The Abbé 
Gouget observes, that the greatest number of the old poets of France 
loved to recall the image of death, and that they used even to introduce 
it into those works which seemed the least serious. ‘The danse macabre 
was a common termination of their pieces.t ‘The ancients did not dare 
in common so much as to pronounce the word which denoted it; so 
that, with the Latins, to die was implied in that remarkable expression, 
**to rejoin the majority.”’{ Not so in Christian ages, when even by 
poets and orators, every particular instance of death is made an occasion 
for reminding men that they will themselves experience it, as in the 
words of Talbot, on the death of Bedford— 


‘*A braver soldier never couched lance, 
A gentler heart did never sway a court; 
But kings and mightiest potentates must die, 
For that’s the end of human misery.” || 


And yet nothing extravagant, useless, or unnatural, was sanctioned by 
religion with regard to the importance which it attached to the remem- 
brance of death. It only said, to use the words of Lombez—* Live 
with the same circumspection and the same humility as if you expected 
death every hour, and think no more of death than if you were never to 
die.”’§ It is related, however, of the Archduke Leopold, of Austria, son 
of the Emperor Ferdinand II., that he used to repeat every night on 
going to bed the prayers for the dying in recommendation of the soul, 
as if his sleep were to be followed by death: but of the spirit of the 
ages of faith in all these exercises connected with the meditation of 
death, we may say, in the words of Cicero, ‘‘Quez non hoc affert, ut 
semper mereamus, sed ut numquam.’’** Who doubts, who denies that, 
in a certain sense, death is a solemn and awful subject for the contem- 
plation of man? From high descends the virtue, by whose aid alone 
he is able to meet it without terror. «In the first place,” as Montaigne 
says, ‘‘ we all come apprentices, not masters to death.”” We find our- 
selves presented with a multitude of thoughts, which are to the greatest 
part of men, wholly new. ‘+ Know this well, O Socrates,’ says the 
aged Cephalus in Plato, «that when any one thinks himself near death, 
a fear and reflection come to him concerning things about which he 
had never thought before.”"tt Of this fact poets have sometimes availed 
themselves, and I know not if this fearful picture be not sometimes 
more calculated than the gravest discourse to prepare men for contem- 
_ plating their end. Witness the account given by the Monk of Melrose 
respecting the last hours of Michael Scott— 


te a ora ara eter merrc ec ercee eR DRO Sy | 2 


* Stobei Florileg. tom. iii. 288. + Bibliotheque Frangais, tom. x. 185. 
+ Plautus Trinummus, ii. 2. 14. | Hen. VI. 11, p. 2. § Chap. ii. 
** Tuscul. iii. 16. tt De Repub. lib. i. 


Vout. IIl.—33 we2 


258 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


“When Michael lay on his dying bed, 
His conscience was awakened : 
He bethought him of his sinful deed, 
And he gave me a sign to come with speed. 
I was in Spain when the morning rose, 
But I stood by his bed ere evening close; 
The words may not again be said 
That he spoke to me on death-bed laid. 
I swore to bury his mighty book, 
That never mortal might therein look.” 


This account so wrought upon the imagination of the listening knight, 
that when the magician’s grave was opened, and he in terror took 


‘From the cold hand the mighty book, 
With iron clasp’d, and with iron bound, 
He thought, as he took it, the dead man frown’d.” 


Fable and romance derive, after all, their greatest charm from their 
concordance with truth. Leaving them, however, for more austere 
studies, how fearful is it to hear a holy man, Adam de Persenna, of the 
Cistercian Order, speaking of the day of judgment, and saying, ‘“ Nes- 
cimus utrum dies illa nobis futura sit lucis eterne diluculum, an, quod 
Deus avertat, crepusculum eterne noctis.”? The dying man knows also 
that he will not have long to wait without being informed of this mo- 
mentous doom. ‘Hades, “Adu, is so called,” says Socrates, ‘not, as 
is generally supposed, from ‘not seeing,’ but much rather from ‘seeing 
and knowing all things clearly.’”’* Speaking of a man dead, the Greek 
poet says, ‘‘ He knows all about it now : ade J” ey Simore wadedereu.”+  The- 
ologians say, ‘that the secret judgment of God takes place in the cham- 
ber where a man dies.”’{ ‘The place of the particular judgment, 
which is passed the first instant after the soul is parted from the body, 
is commonly thought to be that wherein a man dieth. So that God be- 
ing immense and every where, raiseth in that very place his invisible 
seat, before which the poor soul, scarce yet out of the body, suddenly 
appeareth.’’|| ‘Then each one confesses all, and to judgment passing, 
speaks and hears his fate; thence is conducted to the dwelling which 
suits his condition. How terrible is the thought of such a speedy and 
short trial! We can estimate its fears by the impressions which we 
feel on merely reading of the fate of the Plateans, who obtained a simi- 
lar hearing from the Lacedemonians, who took their city, though upon 
them it was only a temporal punishment which could be inflicted. Each 
one of us may be reminded of what awaits himself when he hears the 
question that was proposed to these unhappy citizens as they came 
forth at the summons of their conquerors, one by one, and each was 
simply asked, ‘‘ Whether he had done any good service to the Lacede- 
monians, or to their allies, during that present war?’ They begged 
permission to be indulged in a few words, and not to be confined to giv- 
ing a direct answer; they wished “2xgéve~ cixeiv, and their chief speaker 
was for declaiming at length upon their ancient deeds of patriotism in 
resisting the Medes. But they were not allowed to avail themselves of 


* Plato Cratylus. } Eurip. Ion. 965. 
t Drexelius Tribunal Christi, lib. i. cap. 6. 
|| Meditations for the Use of the English College at Lisbon, iv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 259 


any past services, but still the one short and terrible question was pro- 
pesed to each as he came out; and as he was constrained to confess the 
truth, that he had done nothing, he was put to death, and thus they all 
perished.* 

Strange and terrible visions and events are recorded to have taken 
place in various ages of the church in attestation of this speedy doom 
which follows death, which are not the less solemn, if explained on the 
ground chosen by St. Augustin, who ascribes them to the operation of 
angels acting by divine command. Among the letters of St. Boniface 
there is one relating a most awful vision, which was described to him 
by a man who had been miraculously restored to life, who revealed to 
him what his soul had seen in the other world. Guilty spirits, too, were 
known to come forth from their sepulchre, and to start up from their 
biers to announce to the earth the punishments of divine justice, and to 
say to men, ‘‘ Pray not for me! I am judged, I am condemned!’? Who 
has not heard of that vision of Alberico, from which Dante is supposed 
to have taken the idea of his immortal poem? But while we are on 
such themes, gentle reader, as Socrates says to Theetetus, ‘* Look around 
and examine 44 tis tly duuitav eraxody, lest there should be present any of 
those persons who think that there is nothing existing but what they 
can grasp in their hands, and to whom 7a 70 dezrs is inconceivable and 
inadmissible. ‘Truly, replies the disciple, you speak of dry, hard, repul- 
sive men. O boy, they are not exactly the children of the Muses, 
(adds Socrates,) Eich yap, & et, man’ oo duovoct,” Trusting, however, that 
they are far from us at present, let us hear what was the substance of 
this history. Alberico, then, we read, born of noble parents at a castle 
near Alvito, in the diocese of Sora, in the year 1101, was seized, on 
completing his ninth year, with a violent fit of illness, which deprived 
him of his senses for several days. During this trance, he had a vision 
in which he seemed to be conducted by two angels through purgatory 
and hell, and then to be taken up into Paradise, to behold the glory of 
the blessed. As soon as he came to himself again, he was permitted to 
make profession of a religious life in the monastery of Monte Casino. 
As the account he gave of his vision was strangely altered in the reports 
that went abroad of it, Girardo, the abbot, employed one of the monks 
to take down a relation of it from the mouth of Alberico himself. Se- 
nioretto, who was chosen abbot in 1127, not contented with this nar- 
rative, ordered Alberico to revise and correct it, which he accordingly 
did, with the assistance of Pietro Diacono, his associate in the monas- 
tery, and a few years younger than himself, and whose testimony to his 
extreme and perpetual self-mortification, and to a certain abstractedness 
of demeanour, which showed him to converse with other thoughts than 
those of this life, is still on record. It is conjectured that Alberico lived 
to a good old age. 

There was a similar narrative that used to be told in Melrose Abbey, 
respecting St. Drithelm, whose relics reposed there. ‘This extraordi- 
nary man, the noble Thane of Cunningham, in Northumbria, subse- 
quently a monk and confessor, after a severe illness, rose, as it were, 
from the dead, and reported his vision of the other world to Hemgils, a 


_* Thucyd. lib. iii. 68. 


260 MORES CATHOLICT; OR, 


priest, from whom Bede derived his information, as also to king Alfred 
himself. ‘This vision is also related by Alcuin. These are strange 
relations, but there are others more fearful still, which seem to confirm 
the belief of Origen, that God sometimes permits the spirits or souls of 
the dead to become visible to men;* notwithstanding the doubt of St. 
Augustin, who adduces but negative arguments to disprove it, as where 
he concludes from the fact of his mother having never appeared to him, 
that the dead can never really return to the living ;t though, in another 
place, in reply to Dulcitius, he reasons upon the ground of the possibil- 
ity of their appearing. 

In the year 1150, it is related that, on the vigil of St. Cecilia, a very 
old monk, an hundred years of age, at Marchiennes, in Flanders, fell 
asleep while sacred lessons were reading, and saw, in a dream, a monk, 
all clad in armour, shining like red hot iron in a furnace. The old man 
asked him who he was?—and hearing that he had lived among the 
monks of that convent, he stretched out his hand toward the spectre, 
but it charged him to beware how he touched it, adding, that he had yet 
to endure this fiery armour for ten years more, to expiate the having 
injured the reputation of another.|| ‘Those who are inclined to hear 
such narrations will observe, that the doubts of St. Augustin do not 
amount to denying that such a vision may have appeared, for he only 
infers that it was effected by the instrumentality of angels; however, 
Peter, the venerable abbot of Cluny, relates an event somewhat similar, 
which, from being attested by him, is more calculated to make a deep 
impression upon all. ‘There was a monk at Cluny,”’ saith he, ‘‘ named 
Bernard Savinellus. One night, as he was returning to the dormitory, 
after singing nocturns and lauds in the church with the brethren, he met 
Stephen, vulgarly called Blancus, Abbot of St. Giles, who had departed 
from life a few days before. At first, not knowing him, he was passing 
on, till the other spoke, and asked him, whither he was hastening? 
Bernard, astonished and angry that a monk should speak, contrary to 
the rules, in the nocturnal hours, and in a place where it was not per- 
mitted, made signs to him to hold his peace; but, as the dead abbot 
replied, and urged him to speak, the other, raising his head, asked, in 
amaze, who he might be? ‘To whom it was answered, I am Stephen, 
called abbot of St. Giles, who have formerly committed many faults in 
the abbey, for which I now suffer pains; and I beseech you to implore 
the Lord Abbot, and other brethren, to pray for me, that, by the ineffa- 
ble mercy of God, I may be delivered.’’ Bernard replied, that he would 
do so; but added, that he thought no one would believe his report; to 
which the dead man answered, ‘In order, then, that no one my doubt, 
you may assure them that, within eight days, you will depart from 
life:’? he spoke and vanished. ‘The monk, returning to the church, 
spent the remainder of that night in prayer and meditation. When it 
was day he related his vision to St. Hugo, who was then the abbot. 
As is natural, some believed his account, and others thought it was some 
delusion. ‘The next day the monk fell sick, and continued growing 


* In Cels. lib. ii. + De cura pro Mortuis. 
t Lib. de Octo Dulcitii Questionibus. 
| Hist. des Saints de la Province de Lille et Douay, p. 377. 


AGES OF FAITH. 261 


worse, and constantly affirming the truth of what he had related, till his 
death, which occurred within the time specified.”** But we have wan- 
dered too far amidst this darksome wilderness, where every man would 
rather ask than pretend to point out the way. Let us regain our road. 

To all men, death comes in part as the fulfilment of the original sen- 
tence upon sin. ‘ Mors,” says St. Anselm, ‘*is derived a morsu pomi 
vetiti.”’ It is so far essentially connected with mourning, either from a 
consideration of sin or from a remembrance of what was paid to cancel 
it; or, in fine, from the natural impulse of our poor humanity. Our 
first mother had the consolation of hearing an angel, and of learning that 
glorious decree of Heaven’s mercy, which ordained that her seed was 
to overcome the serpent; but still, nature felt the terrors of the irrever- 
sible sentence, and we read, 


ue So much of death her thoughts 
Had entertain’d, as dyed her cheeks with pale.” 


Our all-perfect and almighty Saviour, Christ Jesus, wept over the 
grave of dead Lazarus: and when he heard of the death of St. John the 
Baptist, we read, ‘*Secessit inde in navicula, in locum desertum seor- 
sum.”’*t We find St. Paul saying that God had mercy on Epaphrodi- 
tus, raising him from sickness, lest, by the death of so dear a friend, he 
should have sadness upon sadness.{ We behold holy Mary too, the 
queen of heaven and mistress of the world, overwhelmed with sorrow 
beneath the cross, when 

‘She saw her sweet and only child 


In desolation calm and mild, 
In life’s expiring throes.” 


‘¢ Where is the man,’’ exclaims the holy Church, ‘‘ who would not weep 
if he beheld the mother of Christ in such suffering?’ Far be it from 
the humble followers of a crucified Saviour to profess a scorn for death, 
which he condescended to endure. It is disarmed, it is vanquished; yet 
its aspect still bepeaks its origin, and the eye naturally turns from it in 
mourning. But if death be thus solemn to the just, to the chosen ves- 
sels, to the highly-favoured of Heaven, what shall we say respecting it, 
as affecting those who die subject to the wrath of God? ‘The ancients 
were able to discern that there were two forms of death, widely different 
from each other, determined by the previous lives and character of those 
who suffered it. Plato speaks of these in the Phedrus, the Phedo, the 
Gorgias, and in the tenth book of the Republic. ‘*The way to Hades,” 
we read in the Phedo, ‘‘is not simple and only one; for, in that case, 
there would be no want of a guide, since it would be impossible to go 
astray: but it seems that there are many cross-ways and circuits—and 
those who have committed sacrileges or murders, or other great crimes, 
fall into Tartarus, whence they never get out. ev od wore exGxivovew.|| And 
Socrates would remind the wicked, that, when they die, ésivos méev o ray 
xanay uebagec vores, will not receive them, but they will have to keep com- 
pany for ever with those things that resemble them, 2x x2x<ie cuvovres.§ 
To the natural terrors of a guilty conscience there was added, in ages 


* S. Petri ven. de Miraculis, lib. i. cap. 10. t Matt. xiv. 13. 
{ Ad Philippens. ii. || Plato, Phedo, 114. § Plato, Theztetus. 


262 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of faith, the conviction, from the knowledge of express revelation, that 
punishments were prepared for every lost soul of man, in the future and 
eternal state: and what tongue can describe that perspective of the hor- 
rors of hell, at which incredulity may for a moment laugh, but before 
which Voltaire himself, when dying, turned pale beyond the ghastliness 
of death! <‘*This I hold, this I think certain,” says St. Jerome, «that 
he who led an evil life cannot have a good end.’ **O what a difference 
in death,’”’ exclaims the venerable Bede, describing the last moments of 
a reprobate. ‘Stephen, in dying, beheld the heavens opened, and this 
unhappy man saw, as awaiting himself, hell opened !’’* What think 
you of that night in which Chrysorius died, horribly crying out, “truce 
till morning, truce till morning !”’ as St. Gregory relates in his dialogue ?t 
‘‘ Now say thou, who goest to spy death, if any else be terrible as this? 
‘Mors peccatorum pessima.’’’ Would you hearken for a moment to 
their complaints ? 
“Thoughts, my tormentors, arm’d with deadly stings, 

Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts. 

Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise 

Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb 

Or medicinal liquor can assuage ; 


Thence faintings, swoonings of despair, 
And sense of Heaven’s desertion.” 


‘«* Mors peccatorum pessima.”’ The great men of this world die full 
of voiceless gloom, and impenitent, die as they have lived, like the Sa- 
rassin described by Tasso: 


“ Argantes died, yet no complaint he made, 
But as he furious liv’d he careless dies : 
Bold, proud, disdainful, fierce, and void of fear, 
His motions last, last looks, last speeches were,t 
‘Superbi formidabili, feroci 
Gili ultimi moti fur, Pultime voci.’”’ 


Or their’s does often resemble that terrible death which closes the poem 
of the Orlando Furioso, 


“The indignant spirit fled, blaspheming loud, 
Ere while on earth so haughty and so proud.” 


‘* Mors. peccatorum pessima,’’ mark again, 


“ Approach the chamber, look upon his bed, 
His is the passing of no peaceful ghost ; 
Which, as the lark arises to the sky, 
>Mid morning’s sweetest breeze and softest dew, 
Is wing’d to heaven by good men’s sighs and tears !”” 


Hearken to that holy monk who is assisting the dying Marmion on 
the bloody field : 


**O look, my son, upon yon sign 
Of the Redeemer’s grace divine : 
O think on faith and bliss! 

By many a death-bed I have been, 
And many a sinner’s parting seen, 
But never aught like this!” 


* Lib. v, Hist. Anglor. cap. 15. _ - Lib. iv, cap. 38. + Lib. xix. 26. 


AGES OF FAITH, 263 


«Mors peccatorum pessima ;”” I will look no more. Itis every where 
the same, and yet this horror is but the prelude to that greater dismay 
when the trumpet of the judgment angel shall sound within their sepul- 
chre crying, ‘‘Surgite, mortui!’’ already, however, are they made ac- 
quainted with their doom: 


«They have slept the evil sleep, 
That from the future tore the curtain off.”’ 


On the other hand, it is true that the judgments of God are sometimes 
seen in the profound obscurity in which the future is involved to the 
eyes of the dying and impenitent sinner, who is permitted sometimes to 
console himself with the epicurean’s affirmation, ‘* that death is the last 
line of things.”’* Pliny remarked the error of the common opinion, 
‘that universally the testaments of men are a mirror of their manners, 
since Domitius Tullus appeared far better in his death than in his life.’’t 
But it is in the modern society that these examples of an ungrounded 
tranquillity are chiefly found, to which no parallel is furnished by the 
history of the middle ages. ‘The ‘Tartarus of the ancients, the cross and 
sinister ways that Socrates speaks of, the testimony of original revela- 
tion, and primeval tradition respecting the future inexorable judges, ‘‘ at 
whose bar,’’ as Cicero says, ‘‘no one can have a Crassus, or a Mare 
Antony, or a Demosthenes, for his advocate, but every one must plead 
for himself,” the terrible announcement of eternal fire by the voice of 
Him who cannot deceive, seem all alike to them, like idle tales to which 
they give no credit; they deny that there can be material fires, or spirits 
and bodies subject to them. Satan says to them, “* thou shalt not burn,” 
as he did to Adam, “thou shalt not die :”’ he prevents them from remark- 
ing, that there may be a doom to penal fire joining wicked souls that 
first had been with fleshly bodies united in ways equally wondrous and 
equally true. ‘The death of a distinguished member of the Huguenot 
sect in France, was thus described lately by his friend. ‘ His last 
words were respecting the things he had always loved: the joys and 
sorrows of his friends, literature, civilization, liberty, and the future 
prospects of France.”” What would Socrates have thought of one who 
confined his discourse to such topics at his death? When these exam- 
ples were first becoming known to Christian society, they excited a hor- 
ror mixed with astonishment, which is forcibly expressed by Madame 
de Sevigné, on relating the death of Charles Il.: I] me semble que la 
mort du roi d’Angleterre devient plus philosophe et Angloise que Chré- 
tienne et Catholique. Adieu roi me fait quasi un neud 4 la gorge.” ft 
But I must hasten on from the dark, and deformed, and sorrowful side 
of death, well pleased to leave so eruel sea behind, to illustrate from the 
history of the ages of faith, what we have alluded to as its beautiful side, 
and to view the fulfilment of this debt of nature in reference to the 
mourners who were blessed. Matter this not unbecoming even an 
heroic theme, as Homer will attest; for the question which Telemachus 
addresses to Nestor, after expressing the greatest reverence for his age 
and wisdom, was simply this ‘* how died Agamemnon ? 


mas Bay’ "Areeidis eheuxeciav *Ayapeuyay 5’ | 


ee 


* Horace, Epist. i. 10. + Epist. lib. vii. 18. Lett. Roy. 724. || Od. iii, 248. 


264 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and with reason, since it is by their death men can be known. ‘In fine 
hominis, denudatio operum illius.”? But who has a tongue to celebrate 
worthily the admirable and glorious triumph of the meek children of 
grace over death and the grave? Who is able to penetrate the depth of 
their mysterious consolations, or to conceive the ineffable sweetness and 
constancy of their hope? It is in reference to them that one may well 
be anxious to inquire from history ; for who does not feel impelled to 
ask, in the words of Echecrates to Phedo, ‘* What was it that these 
men said before death, and how did they die? for it would be a sweet 
thing to hear this.”* Let us look upon them as we find them lying on 
their death-bed, where, as in the instance of St. Dunstan, they saw so 
many strange visions of heavenly joys, showed unto them for their great 
comfort. Let us leave the history of the middle ages to speak for itself, 
and remain but mutes or audience to this act, while it displays before 
us, in the language of these ancient times, the form of death, which is 
pronounced to be precious in the sight of God. 

In the ancient monasteries, there are necrologies, in which the deaths 
of the brethren and benefactors are minutely described ; but besides these 
the monastic histories abound with similar examples. ‘+ Now that we 
have described the holy deeds of St. Richarius,”’ says a venerable chron- 
icle, ‘* what remains but to relate the death of the just? But that should 
not be called death which constitutes the birth-day of a saint; for when 
dead to the world, then he is truly born to Christ in heaven. It is miser- 
able to love the place of death any longer, and after experiencing its dan- 
gers, to seem unwilling to enter the port. Youshould rather rejoice with 
him, that being saved from the wreck of the world, he should now live 
secure and crowned with Christ, eternally safe and happy. ‘Therefore 
we shall not call it the death, but the transit of this Father, who on this 
account is truly happy, because, despising the world he had this transit 
always before his eyes. The day before his departure, when he was to 
receive the object of his long desire, and to be joined forever with God, 
he called Sygobard his fellow soldier, saying to him, ‘I know, my son, 
I know that my end is not far off, and that I shall soon behold my King 
whom I have long desired to see. Do you then prepare a vessel in which 
my body may be placed, not with superfluous study, but for necessary use, 
and my son, prepare also yourself with all diligence, that when that day, 
so near to me, and which is not far from you, shall arrive, it may find you 
prepared. I go the way of all the world, only may the Saviour of the 
world be gracious unto me, and defend me now from the enemy, who for- 
merly redeemed me from the enemy ; that whom I had as the consoler of 
my present life, may be a dispenser to me of eternal life.” The disciple 
hearing him thus speak, wept much, but obeyed his orders, and when he 
had prepared the sarcophagus, the holy father had scarcely breath; yet still 
he continued to pray and to give thanks, while he fortified himself for his 
passage, by receiving the body and blood of Christ: amid thanksgiving 
and words of prayer his spirit departed.t In the same chronicle occurs 
the following scene: * After four years of sickness, Gervin still continu- 
ing to perform all his service to God, being inflamed by a devotion which 


i rte a SL See oy ce 


* Plato, Phedo. ‘ 
T Chronic. Centulensis sive Richarii, lib. i. cap. xxi. apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. iv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 265 


nothing could interrupt, was apprized of his approaching deliverance in 
this manner. In the beginning of the year of our Lord mixxiv., on the 
day when the church celebrates the presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ 
in the temple, he said mass in the crypt of the church of our monastery, 
and being more afflicted than usual, it was with difficulty that he was 
able to complete the mysteries. However, by the grace of God, having 
accomplished them strictly, being fatigued by such exertion, the breth- 
ren supporting him on the right and left, led him back to his room, and 
then he said to them, ‘‘ My sweet sons, do you know I have received 
from St. Mary leave to depart this day?’’ And they asking him whither 
he meant to go? ‘¢ whither,”’ said he, ‘* but to that place to which I have 
always desired to go, and for which I have always besought God ;’’ but 
the brethren replying, ‘‘ that he could still live long, in order that sacri- 
_ fice to the omnipotent God might be offered by his hands,” he said, 
‘never again will brother Gervin sing mass.’’ In fact, he never rose 
again from his bed, and in the beginning of Lent, on the fourth feria, he 
called together the elder brethren and such as were priests, and spoke 
to them as follows: ‘‘ As the blessed Germain said to his brother bish- 
ops, so I say to you, my sons; I commend to you, dearly beloved, my 
passage hence, for I perceive that the hour is at hand, when the salva- 
tion which I have long sought for from the Lord, will come to me; and 
this was always the intention of my prayers, that the merciful God 
would order my death to take place during the holy: days which have 
lately commenced ; and now since I trust that he is about to grant my 
petitions, I wish to confess before you, in the sight of God, all the evils 
which I have committed, and on account of which, I fear for my soul; 
believing that this confession, through the tender mercy of the Lord and 
your intercession, will cleanse me.’’ Having said this, while the breth- 
ren wept round him, he recited before them some grievous sins, which 
they all knew he had never committed; the brethren being astonished, 
having known the innocence of his life, said to him, ‘* But good father, 
you accuse yourself of things of which it is manifest you were never 
guilty. Certainly you never committed adultery nor homicide.”’ ‘* Spare 
me, brethren, spare me, I beseech you, and do not load my soul; for 
if any have perished under my care, truly in the judgment of God, I 
shall have to render an account of their souls; and as for adultery, hear 
what Christ says: ‘qui viderit mulierem ad concupiscendum eam, jam 
meechatus est eam in corde suo.’ With these and other words he com- 
mended the care of his exit to God and to their prayers. Still he caused 
one of the brethren to sing the whole psalter to him every day, because 
he was himself unable. ‘The brethren seeing that he approached his 
end, according to the mandate of St. James, anointed him with blessed 
oil, and asked him where he wished to be buried; but he would not 
point out any place, leaving it to their own choice, but being continually 
urged to do so, he said, ‘I will tell you what I wish you would do, but 
I know you will not fulfil it; fasten a rope to my foot, drag me and 
and throw me on the dung-heap, because I do not think that I deserve 
any other sepulchre. He besought them, however, to carry him in his 
last hour into the church of St. Richarius, that there he might render his 
soul to God. Accordingly, on the third feria of the second week of 
Lent, after matins, the brethren found him in the agony, which he per- 
Vou. I].—34 X 


266 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ceiving, with his hand he made signs to them to carry him into the 
church, and the brethren carried him there, and having spread sack- 
cloth, they placed him before the altar of St. John the Baptist. Then 
having placed the crucifix before him, the congregation began the lit- 
anies, and when they came to Sancta Maria, ‘ora pro eo,’ he repeated 
the words in death, and when they chaunted ‘S. Richari, ora pro eo,’ 
he let fall tears, and stretched out his hands, and repeated the words, 
and then he lapsed into quietness; and the litanies being finished the 
brethren began the commendation of the faithful; and when they came 
to ‘suscipiat te Christus,’ his spirit departed.’’* Ingulphus describes 
the last days of Turketul, Abbot of Crowland :—‘* Worn down by age 
and labour, he expected the day of his release, devoting himself with 
greater assiduity to vigils and prayer, and celebrating the holy mys- 
teries, allowing himself leisure for holy meditations, and relieving all 
the poor, giving food to all that sought alms, and to all the needy, and 
exercising every other act of charity, despising the present life, and de- 
siring the future, neglecting nothing of the regular observances, and yet 
always speaking of himself as an unprofitable servant, and from his heart 
imploring the mercy of Christ. Once every day he used to visit the 
schools of the children and sons of the nobles who were educating for 
the priesthood or the cloister, and to examine the reading and labour of 
each, bringing with him some figs, or raisins, or nuts, or apples, or other 
such little presents, to reward those who were doing well, that all might 
be excited, not only by words or stripes, but by prayers and rewards: 
he assisted divers old monks that were sick to death, and would never 
leave them by day or night, but would sing the regular office before 
them, and perform, like the cleverest youth, all proper service with his 
own hands. At length, in the year 975, after the feast of SS. Peter and 
Paul, he was seized with a fever; and on the fourth day, he assembled 
all the monks, forty-seven in number, with four lay-brothers, and ex- 
posed to them the state of the whole house. ‘Then, having communi- 
cated in the sacred mysteries of Christ, he embraced the crucifix within 
his arms, and kissed it, with sighs and tears, and spoke such devout 
words to each of the wounds of Christ, that the brethren who stood 
near, wept abundantly ; and from the hearts of many of them, as long as 
they lived afterwards, the memory of his devotion never departed. On 
the day before his death, he made a short sermon to his brethren, and 
warned them to be careful against accidents of fire. He departed on the 
day of the translation of S. Benedict, at the completion of the regular 
office, and passed from the cares of his abbatial government to the bosom 
of Abraham.’’t 

Serlon, Bishop of Séez died in the year 1123. Some days before his 
death, perceiving his end to be near, after celebrating mass in his ecathe- 
dral, he called the canons and officers of his church, and said to them, 
“<I feel very weak, through age and sickness, and I see that my hour is 
not far distant. I commend you to God, who chose me to be your pas- 
tor, and I conjure you to pray for me. Let my tomb be prepared, for I 
have but a very short time to remain with you.” After this discourse, 
he went with his clergy before the altar of the Blessed Virgin ; and there, 


Dae els batterie lh oe i De he i eee ane 


# Chronic. Centulensis sive Richarii, lib. iv. cap. xxxv.-vi. + Hist. Ingulphi, p. 51. 


AGES OF FAITH. | 267 


with his crosier, he pointed out the spot where he wished to be interred. 
Then, after saying some prayers, he sprinkled it with holy water. After 
this the workmen opened the pavement, and dug the grave, and the 
masons built the vault; he then descended into it, and laid himself down, 
as if he had been dead. ‘The following day, which was Friday, he re- 
turned to the church, and wished to say mass. He had already put on 
his amice, but he found himself so weak, that he was afraid he might 
not be able to finish the celebration, and so he caused his chaplain to 
say mass; after which, he assembled the canons, and said to them, 
‘«« Come, all of you to me after dinner, for I wish to distribute, according 
to rule, the treasures which I have amassed from the revenues of the 
church, that,;no one may be able to accuse me before God. Sicut nudus 
in hune mundum intravi, sic me decet nudum egredi.”’ At three o’clock, 
the bishopsat down at table to dine, but he could eat nothing. During 
the whole repast, he spoke of God with great unction and grace. As the 
assistants were about to rise from table, he expired.* ‘* When one vis- 
its the sick,’’ says the Abbot de Rancé, ‘‘one has generally to console 
them; but this man, Dom Paul Ferrand, consoled those who came to 
see him die.’’*t We have already visited the infirmary of La ‘Trappe to 
watch the sick; let us now return to it to behold death. Dom Paul Fer- 
rand assisted at tierce, high mass, and vespers, till the very eve of his 
departure. At the beginning of Lent, he had predicted that God would 
remove him hence on the same day as that on which he was pleased to 
die for sinners. On Maunday Thursday he rose at half-past three in the 
morning, and between four and five went to the church and received our 
Lord. On his return to the infirmary, he said that he wanted nothing 
more than a bed of ashes and straw: he was most anxious to hear the 
death-hammer, which is always struck at the moment of a soul’s depar- 
ture. In the evening, he went into the church with a firm step, and 
received extreme unction. When the monk,’ who had charge of the 
infirmary, asked him, on his return, whether the exertion had not made 
him very weak? He replied, ‘Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo. 
Moriatur anima mea morte justorum, et fiant novissima mea horum sim- 
ilia.” On the morning of Good Friday he expired.’”’{ When brother 
Joseph was dying, and already stretched upon the cross of ashes and 
straw, all the prayers being finished, as he seemed to desire something, 
he was asked if he wanted any thing, and he replied that he felt a great 
thirst. The monk brought him some diet drink; but this perfect disci- 
ple of Jesus Christ, who had followed his Master with such fidelity in 
life, desired still to follow him on Calvary. He refused to taste it, and 
said, ‘‘Jesus Christ felt thirst upon the cross, and would not drink.” 
These divine words were the last he spoke; and shortly after, full of 
joy and consolation, he resigned his soul into the arms of Jesus Christ.|| 
When Dom Isidore lay at the point of death, having been silent for a 
long time, at length, about nine o’clock in the evening, as if he had just 
awoke from a profound sleep, he began to chant the praise of God with 


* Recherches Historiques sur Ia Ville et le Diocése de Séez, par De Maurey D’Or- 
ville, 119. 

+ Relations de la Mort de Quelques Religieux de Abbaye de la Trappe, tom. i. 28. 

+ Id. tom. i. || Id. tom. i. 152. 


268 MORES CATHOLICT; OR, 


a loud voice, and with such force that he was heard distinctly in all the 
adjoining chambers. He began with the litany of Jesus, and with that 
of the saints, adding the collects, and many other prayers, the Benedic- 
tus, the Magnificat, the Psalm Laudate Dominum de Celis, with the 
hymn and prayers in honour of the Blessed Virgin; and he departed in 
the very act of singing to resume the chant in the choir of angels.’’* 
When Dom Alberic Godinot was stretched on the eross of ashes at the 
point of death, an ancient friend, who had come to see him, was weep- 
ing by his side; but the holy man rebuked him, saying, ‘* You ought to 
be ashamed to weep for me. Rejoice, my brother, and be not afflicted. 
Behold the time of my joy and of my happiness.’’t ‘Dom Dorothee 
died without appearing to suffer any agony, after he had had a full pre- 
sentiment of the hour of his death. During the last hours of life, Dom 
Isidore never ceased invoking the saints, and saying, ‘ Benedicite spiri- 
tus et anime justorum Domino, benedicite sancti et humiles corde Do- 
mino.’ In the evening, he desired himself to be placed on the bed of 
ashes ; and all the community, on coming out from the collation, came 
to him, and recited the prayers for those who are in their agony ; but 
he was in an ecstacy of joy: he continued to speak of God and of his 
mercies till eleven o’clock, when he made signs to the monk who 
watched over him, to raise him up so as to sit upright; but the monk 
not understanding him, he repeated the sign; and still the monk, not 
knowing what to do, the other monks came round, and began to consult 
together what it was that he wished to say. Dom Isidore, fearing that 
their zeal to serve him would lead some of them to speak, and so break 
their rule,t raised his hand on high, and said, in a low tone of voice, 
full of sweetness and reverence, ‘ Silence, my fathers, silence!’ A few 
moments after he expired, in peace and perfect possession of his facul- 
ties.”’|| ‘* When the father abbot of La Trappe had administered ex- 
treme unction to brother Euthyme, the holy sufferer said, aloud, ‘That 
he hoped, in the goodness of God, and that he trusted in his mercy.’ 

‘I asked him,’ says the Father Abbot, ‘if he expected all from his 
goodness, without depending in the least upon his works; and if he sin- 
cerely renounced his past life.’ ‘I renounce it,’ replied he, with a firm 
tone; ‘and I hope all from the goodness of God; it is so great, that he 
has compassion and mercy upon those who are unworthy as I am.’ 
This poor brother died in such peace, that it was like a lamp which 
goes out without any one perceiving it. We did not know whether he 
was dead, or whether he yet breathed; but he had departed.’’*§ ** Bro- 
ther Peter Durant was three months sick ; and during the whole time, 
he never failed a single day, not even on that of his death, to say his 
office on his knees. He went to the church at four o’clock in the morn- 
ing to receive the last sacraments. ‘Two minutes before his death, he 
was regarding the crucifix with affectionate eyes, and saying, ‘'The just 
crucified for the unjust!’ ‘Phe brethren who recited the prayers around 
him did not perceive when he was dead, so gentle and happy was his 
passage.”’** «When brother Zeno was dying, after the community had 


* Relations de la Mort de Quelques Religieux de l’Abbaye de Ja Trappe, i. 383. 
+ Id. ii. 33. t It was after Complin. i Td. ii. 147. 
§ Id. ii. 147, ** Td. ii. 269. 


AGES OF FAITH, 269 


recited the prayers of the agony, he saluted all the brethren with incli- 
nations of the head, and with an air of sweetness, and cheerfulness, and 
gratitude; and, above all, with an expression of peace which filled them 
with consolation. A quarter of an hour before his death, one asked 
him what were his dispositions at the moment: and he replied in two 
words, ‘Patience and mercy.’ Some instants after, without any con- 
vulsion or effort, he rendered up his soul into the hands of Jesus 
Christ.’’* é 

But let us repair to other places for illustrations of death in ages of 
faith. 

Frodoard, in his History of the Church of Rheims, speaks as follows 
of the abbot, St. Theodulph. ‘+ He lived to the age of ninety, enjoy- 
ing the finest old age, distinguished by his long white hair, amiable and 
smiling in his countenance, temperate in his manners, full of charity, 
liberal in alms, magnanimous in contempt for the world; and never did 
any pain or fever, or fatigue of body, or accident, or pain of the soul, 
prevent him from his prayers, and from performing the works of the 
Lord, as long as his blessed soul animated his body. At length, one 
day as he entered the Church to matins, being seized with slight 
symptoms of fever, he felt moved to recommend his soul to God, and 
continued in devout prayer till sunrise, when he returned joyfully to his 
cell; and when his hour arrived, making his peace with all the breth- 
ren, with eyes and hands raised to heaven, he rendered up his blessed 
soul to his Creator.’’t When the humble and blessed friar James, who 
was a simple, unlearned lay brother, of the order of St. Francis, came 
to die, having begged pardon of all the religious who were assembled, 
he took a wooden cross, which he had at his bed’s head, and kissed it, 
and put it to his eyes, and then, with great tenderness, although he was 
simple and unlearned, said in Latin, ‘‘ Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dul- 
cia ferens pondera, que sola fuisti digna sustinere Regem celorum et 
Dominum.’’ All who were present were astonished—for none of the 
religious had ever heard the humble man say such like words in Latin. 
Having uttered these words, he gave up his spirit to our Lord.{ St. 
Isidore, of Seville, feeling the approach of death, went into the church, 
assembled the people, made them a fine exhortation, then offered prayers 
to God, and rendered up his soul in presence of them all. 

There are some affecting details recorded of the sickness and death 
of the great Abbot Suger. In his last illness he came down, supported 
on both sides, into the chapter-room, where the monks were assembled, 
and then he made a discourse on the judgments of God, the most moving 
they had ever heard. He then fell at their feet, and prayed them, with 
tears, to pardon the many faults of his administration and conduct during 
the thirty years that he had governed the house. ‘They could only reply 
by their tears. Then he told them that he came there to judge himself, 
and that he concluded himself to have been unworthy of the office of 
abbot, and that he deposed himself, and remitted into their hands his 
crosier and all authority, conjuring them to proceed at once to a new 
election, that he might have the happiness to die a simple monk. He 


* Relations de la Mort de Quelques Religieux de l Abbaye de la Trappe, ii. 303. 
tT Liv. i. chap. 25. t Ribadeneira, Lives of the Saints, Novem. 11. 
x2 


270 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


wished St. Bernard to come to assist him, but the saint was unable; 
however, he wrote to him a most affecting letter. ‘‘ Brother Bernard 
wishes, to his very dear and very intimate friend, Suger, by the grace 
of God, abbot of St. Denis, the glory which springs from a good 
conscience, and the grace which is a gift of God. Fear not, man of 
God, to put off the earthly man, of which the weight sinks you down 
to the earth, and drags you almost to the abyss, that man of sin which 
torments, oppresses, persecutes you! What have you in common with 
these vestiges of an unhappy mortality, you who are about to be clothed 
with glory?’? Such was the commencement of his letter. ‘Towards 
Christmas the weakness became so great, that Suger believed his last 
moments were arrived, and he felt happy at the prospect of his deliver- 
ance; but thinking that his death would interrupt the joy that ought to 
accompany these holy solemnities, he prayed to God to prolong his 
life till after the festival. His prayer was heard, and after three weeks 
he expired.* 

In the year 1148, St. Malachy, from Ireland, was seized with illness 
while staying in the Abbey of Clairvaux. Having celebrated the festi- 
val of All Saints with great joy, he assembled the monks on the third 
of November, and told them that God had heard him, and that he was 
to die in their arms. He departed after midnight. 

In the year 1370, when Pope Urban was seized with his mortal 
illness, soon after his return to Avignon, he ordered the doors of his pal- 
ace to be set open, that all the world might be more impressed by wit- 
nessing his death. ‘*It must have been a very affecting and edifying 
sight, (says a writer of that time) to behold a Pope extended like a poor 
man, on a sorry bed, clothed in the habit of St. Benedict, which he 
always wore, his crucifix in his hands, and showing the signs of the 
greatest piety, penance, and resignation.”” Pope Leo IX. died in the 
church of St. Peter at Rome, while sitting near the tomb which he had 
prepared for himself. St. Chrysostom died on his forced journey to 
the shores of the Euxine, in the church of St. Bailisque, into which the 
soldiers had allowed him to enter. 

These are affecting and memorable records. But how deeply inter- 
esting to be able to assist at the last moments of the great and blessed 
St. Francis of Assissi! We read that at his death he said he wished to 
appear before his Judge naked and stripped of every thing. ‘Then caus- 
ing the passion out of St. John to be read, he began to recite the Psalm, 
‘‘Voce mei ad Dominum clamavi, voce mea ad Dominum deprecatus 
sum. Effundo in conspectu ejus orationem meam, et tribulationem 
meam ante ipsum pronuntio. Educ de custodia animam meam ad con- 
fitendum nomini tuo: me expectant justi, donec retribuas mihi.”’? With 
these words he departed. 

Arnulph, a nobleman of Flanders, converted miraculously by St. Ber- 
nard to a religious life at Clairvaux, coming to die, after receiving the 
sacraments, exclaimed suddenly, ‘* Vera sunt omnia, Domine Jesu, vera 
sunt que dixisti.”’ Some thought that he was raving; but he went 
on to explain, saying that the promise of Christ was fulfilled, which 
affirmed that there was none who had left house or brethren, or sister, 


PLR ae Oe OI EN SO oo ee Se nee To See tLe eS 


* Hist. de Suger, liv. vi. 


AGES OF FAITH. 271 


or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for him and for his Gospel, 
who did not receive in this world an hundred-fold, and in the future, life 
everlasting.*—St. Anthony found the dead body of St. Paul the Hermit 
kneeling on the ground, the head raised, and the hands spread towards 
heaven. At first he thought that he was alive, and was praying.—Peter 
the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, describes a very solemn scene connected 
with the death of a poor novice in that abbey. ‘I came to him, (says 
the holy abbot) as usual after vespers with the brethren, and we found 
him in great suffering. He then received from my hands the celestial 
food of our Lord’s body; after which, he lost his speech. In silence 
he remained all that night and the whole of the following day, till the 
vesper hour, when suddenly he broke forth aloud, to our great astonish- 
ment, with the words, ‘Domine miserere, chare Domine miserere, Do- 
mine misericordiam ;? and so he continued repeating these words, and 
invoking St. Martin. With this long and uninterrupted supplication for 
mercy, in the presence of us who knelt round him praying, and on the 
day of the Holy Innocents, did this innocent soul depart from the mise- 
ries of this life, and as is allowable to believe, attain to the mercy which 
he so devoutly invoked.”’t 

It was in the year 1157, that Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, 
went the way of all flesh. His departure was in this manner. On the 
vigil of the Nativity of our Lord, entering the chapter as usual, in good 
health, he heard the announcement of the blessed festival, and after the 
manner of Cluny, he adored with the most humble prostration. After 
the lesson and the absolution of the dead, he began a sublime discourse 
on the preaching of the nativity and the announcement by the prophets ; 
when suddenly, in the midst of his discourse, his eyes overflowed with 
a torrent of tears, and falling down, he was borne out of the chapter by 
the hands of his children, who were almost distracted through grief: he 
remained very ill the whole of that day and the following night, tll the 
first dawn of the morning of the Nativity; and at the very hour in which 
Christ is believed to have come into the world, did he leave the world, 
and proceed to celebrate the solemnity of our Lord’s birth with angelic 
spirits.t 

Paschasius Radbert relates that St. Adalhard, Abbot of Corby, in the 
ninth century, said mass to the last, and preached twice on the day 
before his death. He expired a little after midnight on the Circumci- 
sion; and his last words were full of joy. With hands and eyes raised 
to heaven, he said aloud the Nunc Dimittis: then, after adding that he 
only desired the divine will might be done, he continued with a joyful 
voice, though full of the gravity of faith, «I shall go hence and repair 
to my God. Joyfully I shall repair to him; joyfully I shall die, and 
joyfully 1 shall pass the mighty gulf of this life, since I am about to 
eS at everlasting joys, which have been for a long time promised to 
me.’’| 

How quickly were these mourners comforted by their Divine Master! 
Behold St. Francis Xavier in the island of Sancian, on the confines of 


* Drexelius, Tribunal Christi, lib. i. cap. 10. 

+ Pet. Ven. Abb. Clun. ix. Epist. lib. i. 4, Bibliothec. Cluniacens. 
+ Abbat. Clun. Chronologia. 

| Vita S. Adalhardi, Mabillon Acta S, Ord. Benedic. Sec. iv. p. 1. 


272 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


China, dying in a wretched open cabin on a desert mountain, without 
any worldly assistance—but yet overwhelmed with all kinds of spiritual 
benediction! Claudius Poujol, a monk of Einsiedelin, of most holy 
life, was not prevented by his mortal illness from going to communion 
in the church on the last morning of his life!* The death of Hugue 
of St. Victor can only be related as we find it in Durandus ; for the cir- 
cumstances attending it are such as to defy comment. When this great 
doctor lay on his death-bed, he asked for the body of our Lord ; but as 
his stomach could retain no food, the brethren, distracted between the 
impulse of humanity and reverence for our Lord, offered him an uncon- 
secrated host, which he rejected, asking God to pardon them for what 
they had done; then they, in great astonishment, brought him the body 
of our Lord, which he was unable to receive. Upon which, raising his 
hands to heaven, he prayed aloud, saying, ‘‘ Ascendat filius ad patrem, 
et spiritus ad eum qui fecit illum;’’ with which words his spirit depart- 
ed, and the body of our Lord was no more seen.t 

Hitherto, it is true, we have only beheld the last moments of men 
who may be considered as real philosophers—men who had followed 
the path of perfection in a religious life. But, during the early and 
middle ages, we might discover innumerable instances of the same form 
of death, within the walls of the palace, the castle, or the cottage. 
Every where alike, the priest and the dying man would speak together 
respecting the future world; and as Chateaubriand remarks, the sublime 
scene which antiquity presented but once in the death of the chief of 
its philosophers, was repeated every day in the humble cabin of the 
lowest Christian who expired. St. Servulus was a beggar and a para- 
lytic from his childhood, who used to be carried daily into the portico of 
the church of St. Clement at Rome, where he was supported by the 
alms of the faithful, and where he himself used to relieve other poor. 
He used to get pilgrims and poor people to read the Holy Scriptures to 
him, and to repeat the Psalms. His death occurred in the year 590. 
As he was dying, while they chanted round him, he suddenly ceased to 
sing, and said, ‘* Hark! do you not hear that sweet melody in the sky 2?” 
And with these words he expired. 

St. Vincent de Paul was summoned to St. Germain-en-Laye, to assist 
Louis XIII. in his last moments. he first words of the holy priest, 
as he approached the dying king, were, ‘Sire, Timenti Dominum bené 
erit in extremis.”” ‘The king was so familiar with this sacred language, 
that he immediately replied in finishing the verse, ‘‘Et in die defune- 
tionis sue benedicetur!’’ Suger describes the edifying conduct of the 
King, Louis-le-Gros, when he was seized with the sickness which he 
thought would prove fatal. Suger was then constantly present with him 
by night and by day. The religious prince had, through all his life, 
cherished the desire to die in the Abbey of St. Denis, where he had been 
educated ; and he wished to be transported there on this occasion, but he 
found himself too weak to bear the motion. Assembling all the bishops 
and abbots of his suite round his bed, he made his confession, and receiv- 
ed absolution from them all. Then he distributed to churches and hospi- 
tals all his gold, silver, and precious furniture, giving even his clothes 


* Tschudi Einsiedlische Chronik. 218. + Durandus Rationale, lib, iv. 41. 


AGES OF FAITH. 273 


and the hangings of his bed, in order to imitate, as he said, «‘ the naked- 
ness and poverty of his Saviour, who died for him.’’ Thus reduced to 
poverty, he prepared himself to receive the last sacraments. During all 
his sufferings, which were very great, he never testified the least impa- 
tience or trouble: gentle and affable to every one, he consoled all who 
approached him. Causing himself to be carried into the chapel, there 
on his knees, though obliged to be supported, and with every expression 
of the utmost humility, he adored our Lord. Then he made a dis- 
course to his son, exhorting him to prove himself a good prince, to be 
always the protector of the church, the father of the poor, and never to 
commit wrong. Then, after making his confession of faith with as 
much precision as if he had been a most able theologian, he received 
the communion, and almost immediately afterwards found himself better, 
so as to be able to return to his chamber, where, however, he was again 
placed on his bed—on that poor bed which was now stripped of all the 
ornaments, which had so lately adorned it. At this moment Suger, 
struck with such an alteration, could not refrain from tears; but the king 
said, ‘‘Dear friend, do not weep to see me in this state, but rather 
rejoice that God has given me grace to prepare myself for receiving 
death by this voluntary act of renunciation.’ In a few days he was 
sufficiently recovered to ride on horseback to St. Denis, to return thanks 
to God for his recovery, where he remained for a long time prostrate in 
prayer. Suger remained in his abbey spiritually refreshed by such an 
example of piety. When, at last, this great king came to die, he wished 
to be transported to St. Denis, but again he was too weak to bear move- 
ment. He caused some tapestry to be spread on the ground, and ashes 
in form of a cross to be strewn over it, and himself to be placed upon 
it; and upon this bed of penitence he expired in the act of making the 
sign of the cross. 

In like manner, Henry III. of England, in the year 1272, after con- 
fessing his sins at first secretly, and afterwards in public before all the 
prelates and monks, who were present at his last moments, caused him- 
self to be placed upon a bed of ashes, on which he expired. 

Christine de Pisan gives a minute account of the last hours of the 
great and wise King of France, Charles V. ‘In order to give some 
recreation and comfort to his servants, whom he saw greatly afflicted on 
account of his sickness, he caused himself every day to be raised up, 
dressed, and placed at table; and, however weak, he would still address 
to them some words of consolation and of good advice, without any 
complaint or sign of grief, but only invoking the name of God, of our 
Lady, and of the Saints. Two days before his death, after a most 
grievous night, he rose in this manner, and spoke to all his attendants 
with a very joyous countenance, saying, ‘ Rejoice, my good loyal friends 
and servants, for within a short hour I shall be out of your hands.’ 
They supposed from the joy of his countenance, that he alluded to his re- 
covery; but he said this to intimate his approaching departure from this 
world of sorrow. On the day of his death, which was the Sunday, he 
desired to behold the crown of thorns of our Saviour and his own coro- 
nation crown, which were both brought to him by the Bishop of Paris 
and by the Abbot of St. Denis. That of the thorns he received with 
great devotion, tears, and reverence, placing it before his face; and that 

Vor. I.—35 


274 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of his coronation was put under his feet. ‘Then he began this prayer to 
the holy crown. ‘O precious crown, diadem of our salvation! how 
sweet and delicious is the joy which thou givest by the mystery which 
is comprised in thee, if, indeed, He be propitious to me, with whose 
blood thou wert bedewed, as my spirit rejoices in the visitation of his 
worthy presence :’ and then a long prayer he said very devoutly : after 
which, directing his words to the coronation crown, he said, ‘O crown 
of France, how art thou precious and preciously vile! precious, consid- 
ering the mystery of justice contained in thee; but vile, and viler than 
all things, if we regard the labour, anguish, torment of heart, body, and 
conscience, yea, peril as to the soul, which thou bringest to those who 
bear thee! And he that should well consider these things, would rather 
leave thee lying in the mire than lift thee up from it to place thee on 
his head.’ Then the king uttered many remarkable words, full of great 
faith, devotion, and gratitude to God, so that all who heard him were 
moved to great compassion and tears. After this, mass was celebrated, 
and the king desired that lauds and benedictions should be sung to God 
with organs and melodious chant. ‘Then he received the last sacra- 
ments, after which he blessed his sons and all who stood by his side, 
and then the history of the Passion was read to him; and near the end 
of the Gospel of St. John, he expired in the arms of the Seigneur de la 
Riviere.’’* 

Is it not true, that the death of these Catholic kings was a sublime 
and instructive spectacle? But, that our knowledge may extend to the 
full, let us go now and mark the mien worn at the last by those men, 
whose profession of arms, and lives spent amidst the distractions of war, 
would lead one to fear that their’s, at least, could not have been a holy 
death. We shall find that, in the middle ages, even these rough war- 
riors, who died begging pardon and pardoning all the world, corres- 
ponded in their last moments, in some degree, with that type of sanc- 
tity, which faith had so widely diffused; and that they were far from 
experiencing those fearful horrors and dreadful agitations, which attend 
the departure of those who die the death that hath no end. ‘To most of 
them, one might have applied the words of Macbeth, alluding to Dun- 
can,—‘‘ He is in his grave. After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.” 
For mark their last moments. Behold them heavy with death, bowed 
unto the ground, yet making ‘their eyes unfolded upward, gates to 
heaven ’’— 

‘ Praying forgiveness of th’ Almighty Sire 
Amidst that cruel conflict, on their foes, 
With looks that win compassion to their aim.” 


Such spirits Dante found in Purgatory. ‘They said to him, 


We all 

By violence died, and to our latest hour 

Were sinners, but then warn’d by light from heaven, 
So that, repenting and forgiving, we 

Did issue out of life at peace with God, 

Who with desire to see him, fills our hearts.” 


66 


In the same circle Manfredi appears to him, and says, 


pc AMM aM Ae ed bs SA AAD Sl i Si Dal i tt, Mote Soles Eat iT A keel Vit ta ie BE he S28 


* Christine de Pisan, Livre des Fais et Bonnes Meurs du Sage Roy, Charles V. lib. 
iii. chap. 71. + Purg, v. 


AGES OF FAITH. 275 


« When by two mortal blows 
My frame was shatter’d, I betook myself 
Weeping to him, who of free will forgives. 
My sins were horrible; but so wide arms 
Hath goodness infinite, that it receives 
All who turn to it.” 


Further on he meets a spirit, who can give a more consoling history of 
his end. ‘* Wounded I came to the bank of Archiano, 


rs Fleeing away on foot, 
And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech 
Fail’d me: and finishing with Mary’s name, 
I fell, and tenantless my flesh remain’d.” 


Shakspeare makes Hotspur exclaim, when Prince Henry’s sword had 
robbed him of his youth, that he could prophesy, but that the earthy 
and cold hand of death lay on his tongue. 

When William the Conqueror was laid on his deathbed, he confessed 
aloud to many priests, and in the presence of the nobles of England 
and Normandy, all the sins of his life from his youth, and then, with 
many tears, implored their suffrage. Villars, in a Jater age, furnishes 
another example. Wounded at the battle of Malplaquet, he is in such 
danger, that it is proposed he should receive the sacraments, and in pri- 
vate. ‘No, no,’’ said he, ‘since the army has not been able to see 
Villars die like a hero, it shall see him die like a Christian.’’ 

But what shall we say of death as connected with that chivalry, which, 
in the middle ages, sought to restore to the Church the cradle of Chris- 
tianity, and to their arts the ancient country, which pushed forward its 
forests of brilliant lances to the summit of the Alps and of the Pyrenees ? 
Let the Muse of Tasso come to our aid. Hear how Godfrey, unmoved 
in look, in gesture, or in thought, addresses the Christian warriors on 
the approach of the Pagan host :— 


<< 


A crown prepare you to possess 

Of martyrdom, or happy victory ; 

For this I hope, for that I wish no less, 

Of greater merit and of greater glory. 

Brethren, this camp will shortly be 

A temple sacred to our memory, 

To which the holy men of future age, 

To view our graves, shall come in pilgrimage.”’* 


And hear again how he speaks of the crusaders slain :— 


“But such a death and end exceedeth all 
The conquests vain of realms, or spoils of gold ; 
Nor aged Rome’s proud stately capitol 
Did ever triumph yet like their’s behold; 
They sit in heaven on thrones celestial, 
Crowned with glory for their conquest bold. 
But thou who hast part of thy race to run, 
With haps and hazards of this y’toss’d, 
Rejoice, for those high honours they have won, 
Which cannot be by chance or fortune cross’d.’’+ 


But why have recourse to poetic fabling, when history is so rich in 
splendid instances? Ulrich Baier, the Komthun of Tapiau, fell in the 


* Book viii. 15, + Book viii. 44, 


276 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


battle of Sudauen, in the year 1281, fighting against the infidels in Prus- 
sia. ‘*His death,’’ says the historian, ‘‘ was felt bitterly by the whole 
Teutonic order. As he had wished, so he died: like his Saviour, he 
had received four wounds in his hands and feet, and the mortal wound 
in his heart. By his side lay four other knights slain. His wish was, 
‘Ut possem vulnerari ab eis V vulneribus, sicut Christus pro me fuerat 
vulneratus :’* and the historian relates, ‘ Recipit in pedibus et manibus 
vulnera et quintum in corde.’’’ In fine, the death of the laity, in ages 
of faith, had often all those characteristic features of a sanctified and 
blessed end, which have appeared so admirable in men whose lives had 
been wholly and professedly devoted to God. John Corvinus, waivode 
of Transylvania, general of the army of the Hungarian king, who saved 
that country from the Turks, and one of the greatest heroes of Christen- 
dom, when on his death-bed, would not allow them to administer to him 
in his apartment the last assistance of religion; for such was his devotion, 
full of reverence, that he caused himself to be carried into the church. 
Priuli, the illustrious doge of Venice, whose life is recorded in a curious 
manuscript in the Library of St. Mark, in like manner, received the last 
consolations of religion in the church. He expired immediately after 
receiving the holy communion, with the words, «(In manus tuas, Do- 
mine, commendo spiritum meum et populum meum.”’ St. Homobonus, 
a married tradesman or merchant, a native of Cremona, died like some 
blessed monk or confessor. In the year 1197, going one night, accord- 
ing to his custom, to matins, sound and well, to the church of St. Giles, 
after the office he applied himself to prayer before a crucifix, where he 
remained till the first mass, and when the priest had said the Gloria in 
Excelsis, he extended his arms in form of a cross, and without any sick- 
ness or noise, rendered up his soul to God, and was buried in that 
church, amidst the tears and regrets of all the people. 

But why do I speak only of men, since we find that, in these devout 
ages, neither the weakness of age or sex was able to counteract the sub- 
lime and wondrous influence of religion in annihilating the terrors inci- 
dent to our nature at the prospect of its change? As we have already 
seen, sweet, and in an especial degree blessed, was the death of youth. 
What a beautiful description of a holy end is given by Peter the Vener- 
able, Abbot of Cluny, describing that of a certain good youth, whom he 
calls his dear child John, whose puerile innocence was united with such 
a promise of future fruit?t It is related of a certain student in an Eng- 
lish Catholic college, who died in his fourteenth year, that being asked 
by a priest whether he had a great love for Jesus Christ, he replied, «*O 
my sweet Jesus, thou knowest that I love thee with my whole heart,”’ 
and that saying these words, he expired. The description of the death 
of many of the young students in the college of St. Acheul, recalls the 
most affecting incidents in the history of a St. Stanislaus or a St. Louis 
Gonzaga. Drexelius speaks of an innocent little boy, who, in dying, 
seemed at first in great pain and anguish, till opening his eyes suddenly, 
and looking up to heaven, he assumed instantly a joyful smile, and even 
laughed aloud, so that the persons present doubted not that he was con- 
soled by a vision of angels. ‘+ William Elfinston, when a youth, ad- 


* Dusburg, c. 101. + Epist. lib, iv. 42. 


AGES OF FAITH. 277 


mitted into the society of Jesus, after a month was seized with a mortal 
illness. The joy which he expressed in countenance and in words was 
incredible, never ceasing to return thanks to God. At length he broke 
out into an ecstacy, and asked the persons present if they did not see 
the angel with whom he spoke? and some one asking what was the ap- 
pearance of the angel, he replied that he resembled a certain youth who 
happened to be present. Thus in great joy and sweetness did his soul 
depart to Christ.’’* 

Equally remarkable was the firmness evinced by those who were in 
the weakness of life’s extremest verge. ‘The old died like the young. 
The Egyptians, as Pliny relates, thought that the human heart dimin- 
ished with age, so that, after a hundred years, its decrease would neces- 
sarily occasion death. Had they been familiar with examples like the 
preceding, the absurdity of such an idea would have struck them, judg- 
ing only from the moral effects which were displayed in the benignity, 
cheerfulness, and magnanimous resolution with which old men died. 
St. Gregory compares the human life to three watches of the night. 
The death of the aged, in fact, corresponded with the state of those who 
kept the third watch, and who already beheld the dawn. 

But how wondrously was the power of faith displayed in enabling 
the weak and timid sex to meet death with heroic courage, with a pro- 
found and smiling calm, with an unshrinking, unconquerable reliance on 
the promises of religion! When the venerable Mother de Chantal was 
on her death-bed, as the clergy repeated round her the prayers of the 
Church for the recommendation of the soul, she listened with great at- 
tention, and evinced a sublime tranquillity. Several times she was over- 
heard exclaiming in the midst of the service, ** My God, what beautiful 
prayers!”’+ That illustrious woman prayed with her last breath, evine- 
ing an evenness of mind, shaped as if with an especial view to astonish 
the schools of old philosophy, which never condescended to describe a 
woman’s death. That remark, ‘‘ What beautiful prayers !’”? would have 
filled Plato with admiration, if not with envy. 

St. Rusticule, abbess of the convent which St. Cesareus had founded 
at Arles, died in the year 632. Her last sickness is thus described :— 
‘It happened on a certain Friday, that after singing vespers as usual 
with her nuns, perceiving herself fatigued, she went beyond her strength 
in making the usual reading ; she knew that she was shortly to pass to 
our Lord. On the Saturday morning she felt cold, and lost the use of 
her limbs. Lying down on a little bed, she was seized with fever, but 
she never ceased praising God, with her eyes raised to heaven. She 
commended to Him her daughters, whom she was about to leave or- 
phans, and with a firm soul she comforted those who wept around her. 
She found herself still worse on Sunday ; and as it was her custom that 
her bed should only be made once a year, the servants of God begged 
permission to give her a less hard bed, but she would not consent. On 
the Monday, which was the day of St. Laurence, she lost all strength, 
and her breathing became difficult. At this sight the sad virgins of 
Christ poured forth tears and sighs. It being the third hour of the day, 


* Drexelius, Tribunal Christi, lib. i. cap. 10. 
+ Marsolier, vie de Mde. de Chantal, ii 180. 
Y 


278 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


as the congregation, in its affliction, repeated the Psalms in silence, the 
holy mother, in displeasure, asked, ‘ Why she did not hear the chanting 
of Psalmody ?” ‘The nuns replied, ‘ That they could not sing through 
grief.’ ‘Only sing still louder,’ she replied, ‘in order that I may receive 
the benefit of it; for that is very sweet to me.’ The next day, her 
body having hardly the power of motion, her eyes, which preserved 
their lustre, shone like the stars, and looking on all sides, and not being 
able to speak, she made signs with her hand, that they should cease 
weeping, and be comforted. When one of the sisters felt her feet, she 
said it was not yet time ; but shortly after, at the sixth hour of the day, 
with a serene countenance, and eyes that seemed to smile, this glorious 
and blessed soul passed to heaven, and joined the innumerable choir of 
saints.”’* The Countess de Russelmonde, who died a Carmelite, de- 
sired that the Passion of Christ might be read to her in her last mo- 
ments. She continued to indicate where the reader ought to pause, till 
he pronounced the words, ‘‘ Tradidit spiritum ;’’? and at that moment 
her spirit departed. Drexelius speaks of a holy matron who died smil- 
ing, so that a sweet smile remained on her features after death.t But 
the affecting account which St. Jerome gives of the death of the vener- 
able Paula surpasses, in interest, every description that we could find 
elsewhere :—*‘‘ This illustrious woman,” he says, ‘‘perceived that her 
last hour was at hand; but calm and joyous, as if she was about to leave 
strangers, and to revisit her family, she repeated the words of the Psalm: 
‘O Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house, and the place which is 
the habitation of thy glory.’{ ‘How beautiful are thy tents, O God, of 
virtue; my soul desireth after thee, and rejoiceth, in hope of being admit- 
ted into the abode of the Lord.’|| And, «I had rather be the last in the 
house of my God than dwell in the tent of the sinner.’§ And when I 
asked her, why she kept silence, and did not answer, and whether any 
thing caused her grief, she said to me, in the Greek language, that she 
felt no regret, but that she was absorbed in the contemplation of that 
rest and perfect tranquillity to which she was approaching. This an- 
swer was the last that she uttered. She closed her eyes, and, as if 
quite detached from all mortal things, she was only occupied in mur- 
muring, with a voice almost unintelligible, the sacred texts which I have 
repeated. She placed her finger on her mouth, to trace upon her lips 
the sign of Christ, and then she fell into her agony: her soul, ready to 
fly away, summoned her last strength previous to the dissolution of life, 
to give thanks to the Lord. ‘There were there many holy bishops, and 
several priests and Levites, who had come from Jerusalem and other 
cities adjacent. ‘Troops of monks and virgins filled the whole monas- 
tery. As soon as Paula had heard the words of the Canticle, ¢ Rise 
my well-beloved, my Dove; behold the Winter is passed, and has with- 
drawn, behold the rain has ceased,’** she made a last effort, and replied, 
‘The flowers have covered the earth, and it is time to gather them ;’tt 
yes, ‘I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land 
of the living.’tt And with these words she expired. Then there was 


* Acta Sanct. Ord. Benedict., tom. ii. 146. | + Thom. Cantips. lib. ii. Mirac. c. 50. 
t. Pox. 8. | Ps. Ixxxiii. 2. § Id. . 
** Cant. ii. 10. tt Cant. ii. 11. ++ Ps, xxvi. 13. 


AGES OF FAITH, 279 


no sound heard of weeping or lamentation as at the last moments of 
people of this world, but all resounded with the music of sacred hymns. 
The holy bishops themselves took up the body of the deceased, and a 
certain number of the priests accompanied it with lighted tapers, while 
others chanted psalms. It was deposited in the grotto where the Sav- 
iour was born, having been conducted by an immense multitude, which 
this pious ceremony had collected from all the cities of Palestine. No 
solitary recluse for that day wished to remain in his retreat, and there 
was no virgin who did not leave her cell. It would have been deemed 
by every one an impiety not to have hastened to show the last honours 
to the illustrious deceased. Widows and the poor wept while they 
showed the vestments which they owed to her charity, and all the 
unhappy whom she had consoled, cried out, that they had lost their 
mother. It was astonishing to observe that death had not changed her 
countenance. A sweet calm, mixed with gravity, was painted on all 
her features; so that she seemed not dead, but sleeping a peaceful sleep. 
The prayers for her were continued during the whole week. ‘The fol- 
lowing was her epitaph :—‘* Paula, descendant of the Gracchi, sprung 
from the illustrious blood of the great Agamemnon, Paula, who owed 
her origin to the celebrated Scipio, reposes in this tomb. She was the 
mother of Eustochium: her rank was illustrious here below among the 
Roman nobility, but she renounced vain earthly honours to imitate the 
poverty of Christ, and she came to conceal her life in Bethlehem.’’* 
Such, then, are a few of the examples which the history of the ages 
of faith affords us, when we examine it in reference to the mourning of 
men in their last hours, and in their death. Such was the manner of 
their departing. ‘Thus simply and sweetly did they die, without any 
affectation of false philosophy evincing the insincerity and pride of a 
Possidonius, or desire of acting a scene to receive the plaudits of fellow- 
creatures, springing from that lofty and vain exaggeration of soul which 
seemed so magnificent to Cicero. Had we sufficient time to develope 
fully this view of history, and to point out all the collateral instruction 
to be derived from it, the present would be an excellent occasion for 
exposing the insane presumption of those innovators, who asserted and 
attempted to prove, by theological reasoning, that faith and true piety 
had perished in the middle ages—for there was then nothing singular or 
extraordinary in the scenes which are here described. Here were no 
doctrines contrary to what was professed by the universal Church. It 
was the spirit of the times to die thus. I know, indeed, that the best 
answer to the propositions of heresy would be found in the lives and 
writings of these children of grace; but, methinks, even in their death, 
they supply us with enough to disprove the calumny of their adversa- 
ries, and to answer the ends ofa solid and practical refutation. But the 
limits appointed to our course will not permit any further delay: let the 
reader pursue the inquiry for himself: for us it will be sufficient to take 
leave of the subject with the words of the sacred page, ‘* Eece quomodo 
moritur justus, et nemo percipit corde: et viri justi tolluntur, et nemo 
considerat.’’ However, somewhat still remains to be done; for as it 
secmed best not to interrupt these narratives, to explain as they occurred 


* S, Hieronymi Epist. ad Eustochium, Virg. 


280 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


the many things contained in them which, in an historical and philo- 
sophie sense, deserve particular attention, it will be necessary now to 
retrace our steps, taking a brief survey of them in general, in order to 
complete our view of the character which the mourning attendant upon 
death had assumed, and of the duties and manners to which it gave rise. 
In the first place, we must have been struck with the uniformity which 
distinguished the monastic observances in regard to death. In fact, 
these, which recalled but the customs of the primitive Christians, were 
every where nearly the same. ‘* When a monk was sick, and in pros- 
pect of death, a servant brother was appointed, who should have nothing 
else to do but to tend him day and night. ‘The cross was placed before 
his face, and every night a wax taper was kept burning by his side until 
broad day. Monks were allowed to be in attendance on him in order to 
sing the regular hours, and to read the Passion in his extremity. The 
servants, who had experience in such things, were to watch the proper 
moment, and to spread the ashes, and gently to place the sick man upon 
them, and then to give a signal, by striking the door of the cloister, when 
all the brethren were to run to the chamber, for this was one of the two 
occasions when it was permitted them to depart from their usual meas- 
ured pace, the other being in the event of fire. If mass should be cele- 
brating, or any regular office, all who were without the choir were to 
hasten, but those within were to remain. If the monks were in the re- 
fectory, the reading was to be instantly suspended, and the monks were 
to hasten. The litany was then to be chanted, and the prayers accord- 
ing to the progress of his agony.* 

The manner of professing penitence by the reception of ashes was 
well known, as Mabillon shows in the sixth age. ‘Thus Severus Sul- 
picius describes the death of St. Martin, who, in his last hour, desired 
his disciples to prepare some vile couch for his body, saying, ‘* Non 
decet filii Christianum nisi in cinere et cilicio mori.’? On these occa- 
sions, the sack-cloth was spread on the ground, ashes were strewed upon 
it in form of a cross, and the persons who assisted a dying person gently 
placed him upon it. The laity often observed this custom at their death, 
as we have seen recorded of Louis VI. of France, and Henry III. of 
England. The monk of St. Denis also relates that Louis IX. gave up 
the ghost on sack-cloth and ashes, and with his arms composed in form 
of a cross.t It was a pious custom, as early as in the sixth century, for 
Christians, in their last hours, to be carried into the church to die before 
the altar. This appears in the acts of Saints Benedict, Maur, Gilda, and 
others; and Bede gives a similar account of the death of St. Cuthbert, 
Bishop of Lindisfarn. Universally, the image of our Lord on the cross 
was placed before the bed of the dying man. ‘ Sometimes it happens,” 
says a holy priest, writing at the time when modern manners had super- 
seded those of faith, ‘that, on being called to assist at the last moments 
of some noble, there is not one crucifix to be found in all his superb 
apartments, where such care has been taken to leave no material want 
unsupplied. At length, some one recollects, that on the upper story of 
the same hotel, immediately beneath the tiles of the roof, there lives some 


wohl lp ee Rag oe ee ee ne ra 


* Antiq. Consuetud. Cluniacens. Monastic. cap. 29. Apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. iv. 
¢ Mabillon Prefat. in 1. Secul. Benedict. § 9. 


AGES OF FAITH. 281 


poor man, some young scholar, and it is suggested that, of course, he 
must have a crucifix. Then they hasten to make known their wants, 
and there they find a cross; and this poor man, or this scholar, lends it 
to the dying rich man, who at least is presented in his agony with that 
image which is designed to console those who in their lives have known 
the labours of men. When Cesar fell, he had no object before him but 
the stern countenance of that great Pompey, whose dread form, carved 
in stone, as we yet behold it, can inspire only awe; but, in Christian 
ages, there were few places in which a man could die without having 
his last looks directed to some cross, the emblem of hope and mercy! 
The Maid of Orleans asked for a crucifix at her death, when every form 
of horror was accumulated. An Englishman broke a stick in two parts, 
and made a cross: the maid took it, kissed it, pressed it to her bosom, 
and mounted the pile. Mention has been made also of the death-taper. 
This alludes to the lighting that blessed candle which seems so odious 
to the children of this world, but so full of joy to the just: it signified 
the light of faith and the lucid mansions, and it was used to dispel the 
fears of the departing soul. ‘The body itself, when it lay without a 
name, seemed to partake of the new and blessed form of death. The 
temperate and austere discipline of Catholics was favourable to the deli- 
cate susceptibility of noble natures ; for to them it is an agreeable thought, 
that the body should not become a rich feast for disgustful worms, and a 
vast receptacle for pestiferous exhalations. ‘The spectacle of a rich 
epicure within his shroud, or of one of these modern philosophers with 
whom he who dines best to the last makes the best end, would be almost 
enough to induce such men to fly to a monastery, where death would be 
stripped even of what seemed horrible to the senses, and where even 
the body would seem to participate in the soul’s purity. In bequeathing 
his body to the earth, the man of temperate and austere habits might 
generally say, with the old poet of France, ‘‘Les vers n’y trouveront 
grand graisse.”’ | 

Speaking of the beautiful appearance of the body of Dom Basile after 
death, the father abbot of La Trappe says, “It is true that it is one of 
the privileges of the servants of Jesus Christ, as the Holy Ghost teaches 
us, not to know either the deformity, or the horror, or the necessity of 
death. Non tanget illos tormentum mortis ; visi sunt oculis insipientium 
mori.”’* Describing the convent of the Carmelites at Nicopie, in Cy- 
prus, brother Nicole, the pilgrim, relates ‘that it was founded by French 
noblemen, and that there rests there the body of John de Montfort, tres 
tout entier, et est le plus beau mort quonques fut veu dessus la terre.’’ 

Again, allusion is often made to the custom which became pretty gen- 
eral, of laymen assuming a religious habit at their death. Thus, in the 
Saxon Chronicle, we read, ‘‘In the year 1056, died Earl Odda, whose 
body lies at Pershore, and who was admitted a monk before his end: a 
good man and virtuous, and truly noble.”’t Milton is pleased to be very 
facetious on this subject,—speaking of those 


“Who, to be sure of Paradise, 
Dying, put on the weeds of Dominic, 
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.” 


* Relations de la Mort, &c. tom. i. 192. + 247, 
Vor. Il.—36 y 2 


282 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


But, not to observe what a remarkable testimony was here furnished to 
the celestial virtues which were recognized in the members of these holy 
and blessed orders, it is well known to all who are correctly taught in 
Chronic lore, that this was a practice observed by men of saintly lives, 
and that it did imply a voluntary renunciation of the world, not only 
because men naturally cling to the most unsubstantial image at their 
death, and cherish remembrances of the dignities and titles of the profes- 
sion in which they had previously lived, but also because by this act 
they were, in the event of their recovery, bound to continue in the ob- 
servance of that religious life which they had embraced in their sick- 
ness ; for those who, under such circumstances, had received the monas- 
tic habit, and who were styled ‘*monachi ad succurrendum,”’ had not 
liberty to return to the world on their recovery. This being known to 
every one, the act was certainly less indicative of a superstitious vener- 
ation than of a conversion of the heart to God. In Spain, such men 
were entitled confessors, as Ducange proves in his Glossary. 

A memorable instance of the scrupulous exactness with which this 
discipline was observed, is furnished in the history of Spain. Wamba, 
king of the Visigoths had drunk poison. When the bishops and the 
chieftains beheld him lying senseless, immediately they administered to 
him the order of confession and penitence; or, in other words, they 
gave him the monastic habit; and when this holy king had recovered 
from the effect of the poison, understanding that orders had been im- 
posed upon him, he retired to a monastery, and there, as long as he 
lived, he remained in religion. This is the account given by Alfonso, 
Bishop of Salamanca; but the passage is explained by ancient Spanish 
writers, who say that the king at the time had expressly demanded the 
habit of religion.* Many princes became monks ad succurrendum. 
Thus Lothaire, son of Louis-le-Debonnaire, was made a monk in sick- 
ness at Prumia, and soon after died. ‘The Fratres ad succurrendum 
were inscribed on the boards of the monastery, as persons partaking of 
the suffrages. ‘Thus, John Commeneus, Emperor of the Greeks, has 
a place in the Necrology of the Abbey of St. Martin apud Laudunum. 
The words are, ‘XV. Kal. Maii commemoratio Jonanis Imperatoris 
hujus ecclesie Fratris ad succurrendum.?”’ 

With respect to the moral characteristics of death in the ages of faith, 
many peculiarities must have excited attention in the preceding series 
of examples. 

In the first place, what repeated allusions are made to the foreknow- 
ledge of death, and to its announcement in a supernatural manner! St. 
Francis Xavier told a certain merchant named Veglio, who was a holy 
man, that when the wine in his glass should taste bitter, it would be a 
signal to him to prepare for death. The event fulfilled the prediction.{ 
In many ancient church windows, as well as on the hangings in the 
choir of Westminister Abbey, was represented the story of the fore- 
warning of death, made to king Edward the Confessor, by some pil- 
grims, who came to him from Jerusalem and gave him a ring which he 
had before secretly given to a poor man that asked his charity in the 


* Mabillon Preefat. in iv. Secul. Benedict. § cap. 7. a 
t+ Id. Prefat. in iii. Secul. § 1. t Bonhours Vie de S. S. F. X. ii. 178. 


AGES OF FAITH. 283 


name of God and of St. John the Evangelist, for it is said that he never 
refused any man who asked alms in the name of St. John, and he had 
nothing to give at that moment but the ring from his finger. Machiavel 
relates, ‘that the Duke of Milan had a strong presentiment of his death ; 
for on the morning of St. Stephen’s day when he was assassinated, after 
putting on his cuirass to proceed in solemn state to the church of St. 
Stephen, he took it off again, and said that he would hear mass that day 
in the castle chapel, and hearing that his almoner was already departed 
for St. Stephen’s with all the ornaments of his chapel, he desired that 
the Bishop of Como might supply his place; but as the Bishop was 
unable to do so, he was obliged to proceed to the church where his 
murderers were waiting for him.’’* 

Hugo Flaviniacensis, in the chronicle of Verdun, relates that Odilia, 
the daughter of Count Herimann, being told that she was to die on the 
following day, by Richard Abbot of St. Vito, prepared herself according- 
ly, and expired suddenly on the morrow while they were praying around 
her, and strange to hear, administering to her the sacred oil, though pre- 
viously without illness. What remarkable instances, too, are recorded 
of men being apprized in a manner supernatural of the death of others 
at a distance ! 

St. Gregory of Tours relates, ‘that the blessed Severinus, Bishop of 
Cologne, on a Sunday morning after matins, going about as usual with 
his clerks, heard a chorus of angels in the sky, and he knew that it arose 
from the fact, that the soul of St. Martin was at that moment departing, 
and so the event proved.”’+ Now it is true, that St. Gregory of ‘Tours 
has collected many reports, to some of which it is difficult to give perfect 
credence ; but what shall we say of the fact of St. Ambrose, while cele- 
brating mass at Milan, having been miraculously made acquainted with 
St. Martin’s death at Tours? St. Hugo, the sixth abbot of Cluny, and 
St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, died both on the same night, 
and a holy monk had a vision at the time announcing their death. ‘The 
venerable Bede has another most remarkable instance. ‘‘The same 
night in which St. Hilda died in her monastery at Whitby, it pleased 
the Almighty, by a manifest vision, to make known her death in a dis- 
tant monastery, which is called Hakenes. ‘There was in this house a 
certain nun named Begu, who had served our Lord in a monastic con- 
versation upwards of thirty years. She being then at rest in the dormi- 
tory of the sisters, heard on a sudden, in the air, the accustomed sound 
of the bell, which used to awaken and call them to prayers when any 
one of their community was taken out of this world; upon which open- 
ing, as she imagined, her eyes, she saw the top of the house uncovered, 
and a light from above filling all the place: which, when she had atten- 
tively considered, she saw in that same light the soul of the said servant 
of God going up to heaven, attended and conducted by angels; upon 
which, immediately rising in terror, she ran to the nun who then pre- 
sided in the monastery in place of the Abbess Frigyth, and with many 
tears and sighs, told her that the Abbess Hilda, the mother of them all, 
was departed this life, and had ascended in her sight, encircled with an 
immense light, to the mansion of light eternal, and to the happy society 


* Hist. of Florence, lib. vii. + Mirac. cap. 4.5.  { Bibliothec. Cluniacens. 438. 


284 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of the citizens of heaven. ‘The other hearing this, called up all the 
sisters, and assembling them in the church, admonished them 1o pray 
and sing psalms for the soul of their mother, which having performed 
during the remainder of the night, they were informed by the brethren 
who came there in the morning from Whitby, that she had departed 
from this world at the same hour in which the vision was seen. This 
is the account given by Bede. One might multiply these examples, 
and relate how, in the year 660, on the sixteenth of January, St. Furey 
departed this life, in the village called Massiere, in Picardy, and the 
same hour appeared to Count Haymond, in sacerdotal vestments, 
attended by a deacon and subdeacon, with a lighted taper in his hand, 
saying, ‘that according to his promise he was come to wish him fare- 
well before leaving the world;’’ but as accounts of this kind are familiar 
to every one, it is of more importance to call the attention to those me- 
morable records of predicted, or rather of demanded death, which are 
found in the most authentic histories. 

In 1312, Ferdinand IV., King of Spain, was summoned to appear 
before the tribunal of Christ, within thirty days, by the two brothers, 
Peter and John, of the order of Caravalla, who were unjustly con- 
demned to death upon the charge of having murdered Benavidius during 
the siege of Alcaodela, which was then in the hands of the Moors. 
Upon the thirtieth day, which was the seventh of the Ides of Septem- 
ber, he was found dead in his bed, to which he had retired in perfect 
health, so that among the Kings of Castille, he received the name of 
Ferdinandus in jus vocatus.* Walter Burgensis, Bishop of Poitiers, 
unjustly accused and deposed by Pope Clement V., bore the injury with 
patience ; but dying, for the sake of example to others, caused these 
words to be written on his tomb: ‘ad justum Dei judicium appello.”’ 
Clement read the inscription, and did justice to his memory ; but of his 
death, connected also with the summons of the Grand Master of the 
Templars, Drexelius declines to speak. Agrestius reviled and calum- 
niated St. Columban after his death. Euslachius the Abbot, disciple of 
St. Columban, summoned the calumniator to appear before the tribunal 
of Christ within the year. Before the term was complete, Agrestius 
met with his death by the hands of his own slave.t Philip, King of 
France, solemnly cited to appear before the divine judgment within the 
year, by the Grand Master of the Templars, died on the twenty-ninth 
of November of that year. Francis Duke of Brittany, receiving back 
his brother Giles, who had been in England for his education, cast him 
into prison upon a false charge of treason and put him to death. The 
innocent youth cited his brother to appear with him before the tribunal 
of God within the year; Francis died of the dropsy before the term 
expired.{ Nantinus, Count of Angouleme, cited to judgment before 
God, by Heraclius the Bishop, expired, crying out that he was sum- 
moned by the priest, and that he acknowledged his crimes. || Rodulph, 
Prince of Austria, unjustly condemning to death a certain knight, who 
was enclosed in a sack and thrown into the river, the knight, before his 


* Mariana, lib. xv. de reb. Hisp. c. 11. Tt Surius, Mense Martio die 29. 
+ neas Sylvius, Hist. Europe, cap. 43. 
| Greg. ‘Turonens, lib. v. Hist. France. c, 36. 


AGES OF FAITH, 285 


head was covered, beheld the duke at a window, and cried out with a 
loud voice, ‘* Duke Rodulph, I summon you to the tremendous tribunal 
of Christ, that you may give an account for putting me to death unjust- 
ly,’ he said, and was pressed down, and he disappeared in the waters. 
The duke laughed at the threat, but before the end of the year he was 
seized with a fever, which he acknowledged to be the stroke of Heaven 
calling him to judgment, and he died in horrors.* 


“Oh! how severe God’s judgment, that deals out 
Such blows in stormy vengeance-————.”’ 


In Ireland Patrick O’Kelly, a bishop, and Conatius Ornarius, a Fran- 
ciscan friar of noble birth, cast into a dark dungeon by the viceroy, for 
refusing to acknowledge the queen as head of the church, afterwards 
cruelly tortured and led to execution, spoke to the people for half an 
hour, and then turning to the viceroy, cited him to appear before the 
divine tribunal. ‘They were put to death, and the viceroy proceeded to 
Limerick, where he fell sick and died on the fourteenth day after receiv- 
ing this summons.{ ‘The master of the Teutonic order maliciously con- 
demned to death a young man, against whom he had a private enmity. 
The youth, on his way to execution protesting his innocence, appealed 
to the Supreme Arbiter of life and death, and cited his judge to appear 
within thirteen days. ‘Truly, God despiseth not the supplication of the 
poor, his eyes are upon the just, and his ears open to their prayers. 
The youth was executed, and on the thirteenth day, the Teutonic master 
was struck with sudden death. ‘This happened at Riga in Livonia, in 
the year 1407, as Albertus Krantzius relates.|| In the year 1052, the 
Abbot Herveld was unjustly treated and oppressed by Burchard, Bishop 
of Halberstad. In vain he defended his cause before the tribunals. On 
his death-bed he sent for Frederick Count Palatine, and desired him to 
bear this message to the bishop, ‘that he was dying without redress, 
having been too weak to gain justice, but that he appealed to God, and 
that they should both appear before his judgment seat within a few 
days.’’? ‘The abbot died, and in the course of a few days, as the bishop 
was mounting his horse, he was seized with a sudden illness, which left 
him only time to confess that he was hurried away to answer before the 
‘livine tribunal, and there to be judged.§ The abbot of the monastery 
of St. James at Leodium, being attacked by the governor and condemn- 
ed by the bishop on account of his refusing to give up a certain young 
nobleman who wished to remain in the monastery, finding that he could 
gain no justice on earth, appealed to the heavenly court, and cited his 
unjust judge to appear there along with him before forty days. On the 
fortieth day, about the hour of nones, the abbot died. At the same mo- 
ment the governor was in a bath, and hearing the convent bell toll for 
the dead, he asked what it meant, and being informed that the ‘abbot of 
St. James had just died suddenly, he, who had never forgotten to keep 
account of the days from the summons given, was seized with terror 
and astonishment, rising hastily and crying out, ‘* Alas! I must appear 
this day before the Supreme Judge !’’ and hardly had he touched the 


——_—— 


* Drexelius Tribunal Christi, lib. ii. cap. 3. + Dante, Hell xxiv. 
+ Florimundus Redmundus de ortu heres. cap. 20. | Lib. xiii. Vandalie, cap. 2. 
§ Lambertus Schaffnaburg. Annal. apud Baron. tom. ii. 


286 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


door when he sunk down, and with a dreadful groan expired.* Otho, 
the Roman Emperor, being reproved by his son William, the Bishop of 
Mayence, for his marriage with Adelaide, cast him into prison. ‘The 
bishop summoned Otho to appear along with him upon the day of Pen- 
tecost, before the tribunal of Christ; on that very day, Otho being in 
Saxony, was struck with sudden death, and his son had ceased to live a 
short time before.t Baronius denies the truth of this last account, and 
Drexelius declines pronouncing between the two cardinals. 

These recitals are not without moral dignity. ‘ History,” says a 
great French writer, ‘is pleased with things grave and tragic.’”’ But 
they have led us far from the deaths of the just, to which we must now 
return. Another circumstance which must have struck us in the pre- 
ceding narrations relative to their end is, the sudden and gentle manner 
in which the transition so frequently took place, from a state of perfect 
health to the long expected termination of the mortal course. So that 
the deaths of the holy and the unjust were so far often similar. Pelis- 
son died suddenly, as if falling asleep, having the day before received 
the holy communion, a circumstance of which the protestants attempted 
to avail themselves, asserting that he refused or eluded receiving the 
sacraments of the church.|| A holy priest of the diocese of Rouen, 
having begun to say mass, and repeating the words ‘introibo ad altare 
dei,” suddenly dropped down and expired. Many have departed while 
announcing the word of God to the people. The Cardinal de Berulle 
died while saying mass at the moment of pronouncing the words of the 
canon, ‘‘hane igitur oblationem.’’ Birnstan, Bishop of Winchester, 
was a man of*the most pure sanctity ; every day he used to sing a mass 
of requiem for the dead, and at night he used fearlessly to walk about 
alone, repeating the psalms for the salvation of their souls, and of him 
it is said, that on one occasion, when he had finished the office with the 
prayer that they might rest in peace, a voice of a great multitude, as if 
of the dead out of their sepulchres, seemed to respond amen. He used 
to wash the feet of the poor every day, and give them food, and would 
then remain alone in prayer. One day being thus employed, without 
any previous sickness, his spirit departed. His disciples thought him 
still at his prayers, and suffered a whole day to pass, but on the follow- 
ing morning very early, they broke in and found him dead. The citi- 
zens, because of his sudden death, seemed to have forgotten his mem- 
ory, not knowing that ‘‘non potest male mori qui bene vixerit.”’§ Not- 
withstanding the inference of the people here, this was a maxim well 
and generally understood during the middle ages. St. Anselm, or some 
writer of the same age, whose work has been mistaken for that of the 
Father of the Scholastic Theology, speaks expressly on the question: 
‘«Ts it an injury to a good man if he be slain or carried off by a sudden 
death? By no means,” is the reply, «‘For they do not die a sudden 
death who always remember that they are to die; therefore, whether by 
the sword or by wild beast, or by flames or waters, or wheels and tor- 


i 


* Thom. Cantipr. lib. ii. de miraculis sui evi, cap. 35. ; 


T Petrus Damianus, tom. i. Epist. lib. ii, 15. + Tribunal Christi, lib. ii. cap. 3. 
| Hist. de Louis XIV. par De Larrey, an. 1693. 
§ Wil. Malmesbur. de Gestis Pontif. Anglor. lib. ii 


AGES OF FAITH. 287 


ture, or by whatever other mode they die, ‘ Semper pretiosa est in con- 
spectu Domini mors Sanctorum ejus.’ ”” 

Is it of any service to the wicked if they lie for a long time on their 
beds before death? none whatever; for by whatever death they die, 
they die an evil and a sudden death who die not in the Lord, and who 
used never to remember that they were to die.* Again, have we not 
remarked with how little fear these just and most humble men contem- 
plated the approach of death? St. Ambrose said when he was dying, 
‘¢that he had so lived, that he had no sorrow for having lived, and that 
he did not fear death, knowing that he was in the hands of a good Mas- 
ter.’ William of Malmsbury says, ‘“‘that St. Wlstan was of such 
simplicity, that he had not the least fear of his agony and death.” «It 
was,’’ he says, ‘“‘simplicitas nescia de Dei diffidere misericordia.”+ In 
monasteries, and in them the spirit of the ages of faith is still preserved, 
there is nothing more striking to a stranger than the tone and looks of 
the holy religious when they advert to death. When I was lodged in 
the great monastery of Camaldoli, on the Apennines, one of the aged 
fathers used always to be carried into the church ina chair. One morn- 
ing, after a night of dreadful tempest, with thunder and torrents of rain, 
I was informed by one of the monks, soon after mass, that this Father 
Francis, whom I had seen that morning as usual in the church, had 
been attacked with great illness in consequence of the first coming on 
of the cold of September. ‘‘ He feels now a little better,’’ said this 
monk, but, added he, with a smile that cannot be described by words, 
so full was it of sweet religious hope and constancy, ‘he is about to 
set out on his voyage—the voyage, I mean to eternity.” It is in these 
holy communities that one may listen with delight and astonishment to 
the thoughts of faith expressed often in the language of the Phedo. 
«I should wish to convince you,” will the monk or friar say to us, 
‘¢that a man who has spent his life in the study of philosophy ought to 
take courage at his death, and to be full of hope, that he is about to 
possess the greatest good that can be obtained, which will be in his 
possession as soon as he dies. Truly it would be ridiculous ‘if, after 
teaching such lessons all our lives, the moment when death approached, 
we should grow angry at the thought of meeting what we formerly 
praised and made the object of our desire. It would be laughable to 
see a man who had held, that death was only a deliverance from the 
chains of the body, who after preparing himself for it during his life, 
should afterwards, when death did arrive, grow indignant at it. Would 
it not be supremely ridiculous? Certainly it would.”’{ Religion sup- 
plied nearly the same words to Montmorency at his death: ** Ah, Fa- 
ther,’”? said he to the priest who came to console him, ‘it would be 
disgraceful, after knowing how to live during more than eighty years, 
not to know how to die during a quarter of an hour.’” Everywhere, 
indeed, there was deep humility and an exclusive reliance on mercy ; 
but every where also we observe the same confidence, the same sweet 
exalted hope, enabling persons naturally the most scrupulous, suscepti- 
ble, weak, and timid, to go down to the grave, having, with Adamantine 


* S. Anselmi Elucidarii, lib. ii. cap. 31. + De Gestis Pontif. Angl. lib. iv. 
£ Plato Phedo, 68. 


288 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


force of soul, this belief that they would be happy in a life to come. 
Socrates could only advise men, adapaytivas Sec by tavryv env dbEay Lyov- 
Ta, «is gdov cévar;* whereas, in many cases, the humblest minister of 
religion in the ages of faith, could not only counsel, but also enable 
them to do so. Continued mention was also made of those sweet im- 
pressive and tranquil discourses, which were held by these holy men 
before death, which would have seemed so admirable to the ancient 
poets, who were fond of converting to dramatic use the novissima 
verba; and the almost constancy of this phenomena in members of the 
city of God, at some period previous to their change, would have led 
Areteus to abandon his distinction of peculiar maladies in attributing 
prophetic power to men arrived near the last scene of life. Celebrated 
with the ancients was the dying chant of the swan, the opinion of 
which Plato applies in a most splendid passage, to illustrate the happi- 
ness of the future world; though naturalists like A®lian, might shock 
the poetic imagination, by affirming that neither they nor perhaps any 
one else had ever heard a swan sing.t But to affirm, that the unwonted 
vivacity of thought and solemnity of feeling of these saintly men when 
about to leave our world, were like an announcement of their departure 
with harmonious sounds, and as it were, with sweetest music before 
they took their flight to heaven, and set out for a happier land, would 
expose no one to the danger of contradiction, or of being supposed 
subject to the delusions of their fancy. Socrates discoursing a short 
time before his death, remarked to his friends, «how proper it was for 
a person who was about to leave the world, to investigate and to my- 
thologize concerning that passage, as to what he can suppose it to be.’’+ 
In the ages of faith indeed we do not find dying men engaged in any 
inquiry or investigation respecting the nature or consequences of death ; 
but like St. Cuthbert dying, they spoke a few but strong words con- 
cerning peace and humility. They conversed on the necessity of death 
for all men, and on the certain truths respecting the future state to which 
it would introduce them; they spoke with hope of their passing to God 
and to the company of his saints, with whom it was far better to be than 
with imperfect men on earth, and these last accents of the mourning 
dove, must have impressed every one with the conviction that they 
would soon be comforted amidst the ineffable and eternal joys of the 
heavenly Jerusalem. When St. Sturm was dying the monks begged 
that when he was with God he would pray for them: he replied, 
‘‘ Prove yourselves worthy, and be so conducted in your lives that I 
may justly pray for you, and then I would do what you desire.” The 
examples which we gave of dying scenes from the histories of the ages 
ef faith might be multiplied without end, and we should find them all 
characterized by the same astonishing mixture of quiet and sublimity. 
Te conceive them fully, no doubt one ought to have been present; but 
even after reading the description which is given of them in the simple 
unstudied language of the middle ages, is it possible to avoid feeling the 
deepest emotion? Methinks that every one who has attended to them 
will fancy that he hears a revelation of his own feelings in the account 
which the friend of Socrates gives of himself, after witnessing that 
Se aiercemEvoas se ree ae Ct aR er ll 
* Plato de Repub. lib. x. t¢ Milian. Var. Hist, i. 14, { Plato Phedo, 61. 


AGES OF FAITH. 289 


sage’s death: ‘Indeed I experienced impressions that were astonishing 
while present there; for I felt no compassion on being about to behold 
the death of a man who was dear to me; for O Echecrates, that man 
seemed to me to be happy, as 1 judged from his manner and from his 
words, so sweetly and so generously did he die; and I felt assured that 
he did not depart to Hades without a divine destiny, but that arriving 
there, he would be happy, if ever any one at any time enjoyed happi- 
ness. On that account, therefore, I felt no compassion, such as might 
have been called for from persons who were present at grief; nor, on 
the other hand, did I feel that pleasure which we were accustomed to 
experience during our conversation on philosophy, though we then con- 
versed as usual; but without premeditation or art, I suffered a kind of 
strange impression, an unusual mixture composed both of pleasure and 
pain, when I reflected that he was to die almost immediately ; and all 
of us who were present experienced nearly the same feelings; at one 
time weeping, and at another laughing, and one of us, Apollodorus, did 
nothing but smile.’”’* Now let the moderns be pleased to take note, 
that this passage, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in the 
sublimest monuments of antiquity, would pass, if it were not for the 
occasional expression of doubt, almost unnoticed in those thousand 
chronicles which were composed by monks during, what they term, 
the dark and barbarous ages. 

With respect to the last consolation which religion afforded to the 
dying, of which mention is so expressly made in the preceding exam- 
ples, it is not necessary to enter into any detail. Every one knows that 
the Church has always desired, as St. Augustin says, alluding to the 
sacrament of reconciliation, ‘that none of her children should depart 
from this life without the pledge of her peace!”’+ Extreme unction, or, 
as it was called in the middle ages, sacred unction, for the former term 
is not found in any author before the twelfth century,{ was received, as 
we have seen, generally in the Church, for it was administered to per- 
sons who still had sufficient strength to receive it kneeling. ‘The popu- 
lar custom of wishing to defer it to the last moments arose from a super- 
stition originating in England, and thence spreading into France, which 
made the people suppose that, after having received it, it was not lawful, 
in the event of recovery, to walk, excepting barefoot, or to make use 
of marriage. Several provincial councils were obliged to denounce this 
superstition, as tending to deprive the faithful of the remedy provided 
for them by the Church. ‘This sacramental rite had always been admin- 
istered uninterruptedly, both in the Latin and Greek churches, from the 
time of the Apostles. Though it is not expressly treated of by many 
of the early fathers, because it never was attacked by heretics, it is, how- 
ever, mentioned by Origen, St. John Chrysostom, St. Innocent I., St. 
Cesarius of Arles, St. Gregory the Great, and by Venerable Bede, who 
affirms it to be practised by the Church in conformity to apostolic usage. 
In the middle ages, it was the custom for many priests to be present at 
the administration of this sacrament; but, after the thirteenth century, in 
the Latin Church, this usage gave place to the present discipline, though 


* Plato Phedo. t Lib, i. de Adult. Conjug. cap. xxviii. 
t Mabillon de Stud. Monast. pars ii. c. xiii. 


Vor. IL.—37 


290 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


the faithful were still recommended to invite for this purpose as many 
ecclesiastics as could conveniently attend. In connection with the assist- 
ance afforded to the dying, we should particularly remark the sincerity 
and courage with which, whatever might be the circumstances of their 
condition, they were always warned of their danger. Behold Louis XI. 
fortified, walled in, encaged, as it were, in his castle of Plessis. Neither 
his son nor those charged with his domestic service could penetrate to 
him. One could only enter his chamber by means of a staircase, cut in 
the centre of a thick wall; yet there did the Church supply him with a 
voice of severe and frank warning. His death was announced to him 
as abruptly, as plainly, as if he had been a poor peasant—“ Sire, pensez 
a votre conscience; il est faict de vous; il n’y a nul reméde.”? When 
the martial King, Edward the Third, was lying on his bed at the point 
of death, forsaken, and even plundered by his former favourites, one of 
whom took the ring from his finger, amongst so many there was only 
present at that time a certain priest, other of his servants applying the 
spoil of what they could lay their hands on, who, lamenting the king’s 
misery, and inwardly touched with a grief of heart, that anong so many 
counsellors there was none that would minister unto him the word of 
life, came boidly unto him, and admonished him to lift up the eyes, as 
well of his body as of his heart, unto God, and with sighs, to ask mere 
of Him whose majesty he well knew he had grievously offended. 
Whereupon the king listened to the words of the priest; and, although a 
little before he had wanted the use of his tongue, yet, then, taking 
strength, he seemed to speak what was in his mind; and then, what for 
weakness of his body, contrition of his heart, and sobbing for his sins, 
his voice and speech failed him, and scarce half pronouncing the word 
Jesu, he gave up the ghost at his manor of Sheene. Meschinot, who al- 
ways lived with princes, being personally attached to the dukes of Brit- 
tany, takes care to remind them of death in bold and simple language— 
** Princes, vous n’estes d’autre alloi 

Que Je pauvre peuple commun. 

Faites-vous sujets a la loi, 

Car certes vous mourrez comme un 

Les plus petits.’”’* 
From admonitions of the same frankness, the highest ecclesiastical dig- 
nitaries were not exempt, as the following instance will show. John de 
la Moote, the thirty-first abbot of St. Albans, in the reign of King Rich- 
ard II., being at T'ytenhangre, was suddenly attacked with a fatal pleu- 
risy after mass on All-Saints. ‘The monks of the abbey hastened to his 
assistance. William Wynteshal, his confessor, arrived there at three in 
the morning, and addressed him in these words: ‘*'The physicians have 
certain signs of your approaching death, and that you will soon be de- 
prived both of reason and memory; therefore, I require you to attend 
to the salvation of your soul while any vigour remains; then and next, 
make restitution if you have defrauded any body; and lastly, signify 
your will and pleasure in matters depending between you and our breth- 
ren.”’ ‘These instances are worthy of remark, if it were only to show 
the contrast between the spirit of the middle ages and of our own time. 
One of the most admired philosophical writers of the day, showing that 


* Gouget Bibliotheq. Frangais, tom. ix. 412. 


AGES OF FAITH. 291 


politeness depends upon the philosophy of mind, observes, that the be- 
nevolent poor, who tend the sick with such assiduity, have yet litile 
foresight of the mere pains of thought; and, while in the same situation, 
the rich and better educated, with equal, or perhaps even with less benev- 
olence of intention, carefully avoid the introduction of any subject which 
might suggest, indirectly to the sufferer, the melancholy images of part- 
ing life, the conversation of the poor, around the bed of their sick friend, 
is such as can scarcely fail to present to him every moment, not the prob- 
ability merely, but almost the certainty of approaching death. ‘It is 
impossible,’’ he continues, ‘‘ to be present in these two situations with- 
out remarking the benefit of a little knowledge of the human mind, with- 
out which, far from fulfilling its real wishes, benevolence itself may be 
the most cruel of torturers.”’* I do not propose that this curious pas- 
sage should be viewed in connection with those sentences of the Phedo, 
which have been noticed during the course of the present chapter, for a 
comparison between the modern and ancient philosophy belongs not to 
our subject; but it is impossible, after hearing the sentiments of men in 
the ages of faith respecting death, and after witnessing their last moments, 
not to be struck with amaze at the change which must have taken place 
in the general disposition of men’s minds before a book containing such 
a passage as that which I have now quoted could have been deemed, by 
consent of the learned, worthy of a distinguished place among the works 
of philosophy. 

But to return from this digression. It is well known what care was 
taken that every Christian, sick or dying, at peace with God, should 
have the consolation and support of receiving the food of angels, the 
adorable body of Jesus Christ. In the darkest and most tempestuous 
nights, amid forests and marshy wastes, the sound of a bell, and the 
light of a lantern, would announce the passage of a priest with his clerk,t 
repairing to the hermit’s cell, or to the woodman’s hut; and then the 
poor shepherds would hasten to adore their Saviour, and even the rob- 
ber from the wood would follow at a distance, drawn and fascinated, as 
it were, by the mysterious attraction of that faith which he had practi- 
cally renounced, without having ever been entirely able to expel it from 
his heart. The zeal and charity with which the dying were assisted 
during the middle ages tended not a little to impress a new character 
upon scenes of death. It is recorded of St. Osmond, Bishop of Salis- 
bury, in the eleventh century, that he used to assist criminals at their 
execution, and would accompany them himself to the scaffold. The 
Church, in some places, had to remonstrate with the civil power, and 
in council, at Lambeth, at London, and at Vienne, formerly to condemn 
the barbarous enactments which attempted to deprive criminals, doomed 
to death, of the sacrament of penance. Many kings, however, confirmed 
her decisions by humane laws, as Ethelred, Edward, and Canute, in 
England, and Charles VI. of France. Many confraternities were estab- 
lished, 2a which even the laity devoted themselves to the pious oflice of 
comforting the sick. Spenser, describing a holy hospital, alludes to 
such persons— 


* Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i. p. 68. 
+ Statut. Synod. of Troyes de Sacramentis, 8. 


292 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


“ Another had charge sick persons to attend, 
And comfort those in point of death which lay ; 
For them most needed comfort in the end, 
When sin, and hell, and death, doe most dismay 
The feeble soule, departing hence away. 
All is but lost that living we bestow, 
If not well ended at our dying day.” 

Poor people, with their dying words, would desire that their chamber, 
and the way by which the adorable sacrament was to pass, the way 
before Jesus, the King of Glory, the God of men and of angels, the God 
of heaven and earth, the God of time and of eternity, should be strewed 
with flowers; and to honour the approach of the same mighty Lord, 
the apartments of the rich would be adorned with whatever in their 
possession was the most beautiful and precious. ‘To tender and pas- 
sionate souls, this hour, when he came to give himself to them, as their 
viaticum, was the hour long desired and ardently expected—it was the 
hour of love and of seraphic ecstacy. Nothing then remained but to 
press the image of Jesus to the bosom, and to wait in silence for the 
change. ‘This last scene of the solemn act was closed by the Church’s 
holy prayers, which winged the faint soul to mount to heaven, bidding 
it go forth from this world in the name of God the Father Almighty, who 
created it, in the name of Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, who 
suffered for it, in the name of the Holy Spirit, which had been imparted 
to it: in the name of angels and archangels, in the name of thrones and 
dominations, in the name of principalities and powers, in the name of 
cherubim and seraphim, in the name of patriarchs and prophets, in the 
name of holy apostles and evangelists, in the name of holy martyrs and 
confessors, in the name of holy ‘monks and hermits, in the name of holy 
virgins and all the saints of God, that its rest that day might be in peace, 
and its habitation in holy Sion. 

This assistance at death was connected also with many remarkable 
narratives, which, I believe, would have excited the envy of Cicero, if 
he could have heard them after composing his Tusculan disputations ; 
for who can doubt but that he would have rejoiced to have been able to 
adorn his page with such an account as that relating to the bishop in 
Scotland, who, when travélling alone on horseback among the High- 
lands, was forced, by a sudden and violent snow-storm, to seek shelter 
in a poor cottage by the way-side, where he was told that the father of 
the family was lying in an inner room dangerously ill. Ever attentive 
to the object of his holy mission, the good bishop desired to see him; 
and, on being admitted, proceeded to admonish the poor man of his dan- 
ger; but he replied, that he felt assured of his recovery. As the bishop, 
however, persisted in showing him the groundlessness of his confidence, 
and in exhorting him to prepare for death, he confessed the secret cause 
which made him feel so secure, saying that he was a Catholic, and that 
during the last thirty years of his life, ever since he had first come into 
that desolate region, he had prayed to God not to take him £ om the 
world without enabling him to receive the last sacraments of holy 
Church. Pierced to the heart with reverential awe, the saintly bishop 
told him, that he who stood over him was a priest and a bishop, that he 
had with him the holy oils and the precious body of our Lord. ‘Then 
God has heard my prayer,’ cried the dying man, ‘‘and now may he let 


AGES OF FAITH, 293 


his servant depart in peace.’’ The bishop administered to him the holy 
and adorable mysteries of the Church, and before he withdrew the soul 
was gone to behold its Judge. Equally interesting is the account given 
of a priest who was hastening on his errand of blessed charity, one dark 
and stormy night, through some of the most obscure lanes in London, 
to bear assistance to some poor dying person in that neighbourhood. 
As he passed, suddenly the ground gave from under his feet, and he was 
precipitated through one of those cellar entrances which in some quar- 
ters of the capital are so frequently to be found adjacent to the wall. 
Recovering from the first shock, a deep moan, proceeding as if from 
the farthest end of this sombre vault, engaged all his attention. ‘In 
God’s name who are you, and where am [I fallen?’’ asked the priest. 
‘‘] know you,” replied a feeble voice; ‘*you are a priest of the holy 
Church, come to console me at my death.”” A child now came up to 
him, whom the priest, with entreaties and charges of authority, prevailed 
upon to ascend into the street, in order to procure a light. But the 
narrative is soon concluded: this poor dying person received from the 
priest’s hands the last consolations of religion, and then expired in his 
arms. 

We have seen the consolations administered to the dying, but what 
was the condition of the surviving friends after the departure of him 
whom they loved, and what was the character of their mourning? Let 
the answer be sought in the writings of the ages of faith. In the first 
place, they were desired to make use of the assistance of reason and 
natural wisdom, as far as it was in the order of Providence that it should 
console them. ‘To this St. Basil appeals in writing to the widow of 
Arintheus, saying, ‘‘ He was a man, and he is dead, like Adam, like 
Abel, like Noah, like Abraham, like Moses, like all that has ever been 
great among men.”’ It is the same spirit which dictates that striking 
reply in Shakspeare, on hearing that the Lady Macbeth is dead— 


** She should have died hereafter. 
There would have been a time for such a word.” 


But to these considerations of natural wisdom were added the superna- 
tural consolations of faith, which reminded men not only of the neces- 
sity, but of the happiness of dying. ‘*How many times,” says St. 
Cyprian, ‘‘my dearest brethren, hath God deigned to charge me open- 
ly,—me, humble and weak creature, to announce to you in my ser- 
mons, that we ought not to weep for those of our brethren whom the 
Lord has delivered from the world, since we know well that they are 
not lost, but only sent before us; and that, in their departing, they only 
precede us like travellers, and those who make voyages on the sea; that 
we ought to regret them, but not to lament them with cries; that we 
ought not to clothe ourselves with garments of mourning, when they 
have assumed in heaven the bright white robe; that we ought not to 
give the Gentiles an occasion to reproach us for weeping on account of 
those who we say live with God, as if they were for ever plunged in 
the abyss of annihilation. We betray our hope and our faith.”’* Hear 
again how St. Basil writes to a mourning father,—‘‘As the Lord hat 


* On the Necessity of Dying. 
Z 2 


294 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


established us to be, as it were, a second father to all Christians, we 
have regarded, as personal to ourselves, the affliction which you have 
experienced in the death of your blessed son. Upon hearing the de- 
plorable details, we were at first moved, after the manner of men; but 
upon recollection, and as soon as we had considered this event with the 
eyes of faith, we asked pardon of God for having suffered our soul to 
be carried away by the force of passions; and we encouraged ourselves 
to endure what the ancient sentence of our God hath made the destiny 
of all mankind. If the life of this young man has not been of long 
duration here below, every one who reflects for a moment must con- 
clude that this has been one of the greatest favours of heaven towards 
him. A longer abode upon earth is only a longer subjection to all kinds 
of evils. He has not known crime; he has never injured his neigh- 
bour; he has never been drawn on by unhappy circumstances to mix in 
the society of the wicked; he has lived exempt from lying, from ingrat- 
itude, from avarice, from voluptuous passions, from the vices of the flesh, 
and from the many other miserable productions of human depravity. 
His pure and spotless soul has retired from the world to rise to a hap- 
pier region.”’ 

Such is the language of consolation that we find invariably addressed 
to mourners during the middle ages, and such the sentiments which 
they themselves expressed, as being their support and encouragement. 
‘«‘ Length of time,” says Egburg, in a letter to the holy Abbot Winfred, 
respecting the death of his brother—‘‘length of time will turn my pre- 
sent sorrow into gladness, for it is written, ‘Amor hominis adducit dolo- 
rem: amor autem Christi illuminat cor.’’’* Faithful in respect to his- 
torical similitude is the description which Tasso gives of the mourning 
of the Crusaders on the death of Dudon— 

“ His wailing friends adorn’d the mournful bier 
With woeful pomp, whereon his corpse they laid: 
And when they saw the Bulloigne prince draw near, 
All felt new grief, and each new sorrow made ; 
But he, withouten show or change of cheer, 

His springing tears within their fountains staid ; 
His rueful looks upon the corse he cast 

Awhile, and thus bespake the same at last: 

We need not mourn for thee, here laid to rest, 
Earth is thy bed, and not thy grave; the skies 
Are for thy soul, the cradle and the nest, 

There live, for here thy glory never dies; 

For like a Christian knight and champion blest, 
Thou did’st both live and die.” 

But let us now return to the immediate scene of mourning, to cast 
one look upon the sheeted dead, and to inquire what duties remain to 
be accomplished with regard to the departed soul. Durandus says, 
‘‘ That, at the moment of death, the bell was tolled thrice to denote the 
absolution which had been given to the penitent for the three modes of 
sin, by thought, word, and work ;{ and that for a clerk, the bells were 
tolled as many times as denoted the number of his orders.’’||_ It appears 
that in the time of St. Sturm, Abbot of Fulda, it was the custom to toll 


* S. Bonifac. Mart. et Archiep. Epist. ci. + Book iii. c. 7. 
+ Durandi Rationale, lib. vii. c. 35. | Id. lib. i. c. 4. 


AGES OF FAITH. 295 


the bells for persons in their agony ; for this holy man, at the point of 
death, ordered the brethren to run to the church, ‘et omnes gloggas 
pariter moveri imperavit,”? and desired that the assembled brethren 
might be entreated to pray for him. In England, however, the bell 
was tolled after death had taken place; for, as we have seen, Bede, 
after relating the death of St. Hilda, says, that Begu, a nun of another 
convent, heard the usual sound of the bell which used to summon them 
to prayer, ‘*Cum quis de hoc seculo fuisset evocatus.’? At Rheims, 
the lugubrious tolling of bells, doleful from the jarring of sounds on the 
death of men, used to be called l’Abbé mort, as if the agony of a dying 
person, l’Abboy de la mort, which shows that originally it was also 
tolled in the last moments of men.* 

With respect to the concluding labours employed in the concerns of 
the body, the excessive anxiety and pains of the ancients, on these occa- 
sions, were no longer required. With them, to wash and anoint the 
dead body was the only privilege they could bestow upon the dead.t 
When Agamemnon is slain, the chorus has only to ask— 

Ts 6 Sarbww vy 3 tus 6 Spnvnowy Ha 
which would have been one of the last inquiries that in Christian ages 
would have been suggested by the death of a friend. Priam required 
ten days to prepare for the funeral of Hector ;|| and to describe all that 
was done on that occasion, would require the unwearied tongue of a 
Homer himself. But in the middle ages, the ceremonial connected with 
the body, which followed death, was greatly simplified and curtailed. 
No one in his last moments was led to fear, by the question of a Crito, 
that his faith was vain ; and that he had but lost his time in labouring, 
with a view to the soul’s immortality. St. Paul, the hermit, speaks to 
St. Anthony of his own burial in this style :—* Since the hour of my 
sleep is arrived, our Lord has sent you to cover this poor body with 
earth, or rather to commit earth to earth.’’ So little importance seemed 
to be attached to the burial even of mighty kings, that strange scenes 
were sometimes presented, which might have been obviated if there 
had been greater previous solicitude, or an opinion more generally enter- 
tained of the importance of such rites. ‘Che salt carriers, who had the 
privilege of carrying the bodies of the kings of France to the grave, 
when conveying that of Charles VI. to St. Denis, laid it down in the 
middle of the way, demanding who was to pay them? Nothing is more 
common in the chronicles of the middle ages than to find mention of the 
express charge given by dying men, and even by great princes, like 
Philip, Count of Nemours, not only that no extraordinary pains or ex- 
pense should be employed in their funerals, but even that their bodies 
should be committed to the ground with marks of indifference or igno- 
miny. ‘All these things,’ says St. Augustin, * the care of a funeral, 
the kind of sepulture, the pomp of obsequies, are rather comforts for 
the living than helps for the dead. Many bodies of Christians are scat- 
tered naked on the earth; but Truth itself assures us, that men can do 
nothing further after they have killed the body. A crowd of servants 


* Mabillon Preefat. in iii. Secul. Benedict. § vii. +t Hom. Od. 
} Aischyl. Agam. 1546, f | Id. xxiv. 665. 


296 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


swelled the magnificent convoy of Dives, whose obsequies seemed so 
splendid in the eyes of men, but much more beautiful in the sight of 
God was the ministry of angels which bore that poor Lazarus, not into 
a marble tomb, but into the bosom of Abraham.’’*—* Certain visions 
are related,’’ says St. Augustin, ‘‘ which seem to militate against this 
opinion ; for the dead are said to have sometimes appeared to the living, 
who knew not where their bodies lay, and to have revealed the spot, in 
order that they might obtain burial. Were we to answer that these are 
falsehoods, we should seem to rise insolently against the writings of 
some of the faithful, and against the sense of those who affirm that such 
things have happened to themselves; but we may reply, that the living 
also, without being conscious of it, appear often in dreams to the living ; 
and, therefore, these visions of the dead cannot prove that the departed 
soul has really returned to instruct them. Such things, perhaps, may 
be done by angelic operation, without the knowledge of those whose 
bodies are unburied, by divine command, in order to console the living, 
or by these admonitions to recommend the humanity of sepulture to the 
human race, the neglect of which cannot injure the dead, but would 
argue impiety in the living. Why should we not credit these angelic 
operations by the dispensation of the Providence of God, exerted to- 
wards the good and the evil, according to the unsearchable depth of his 
judgment, whether the minds of mortals are thence instructed or de- 
ceived, consoled or terrified, according as mercy or punishment is due 
to each from Him whose mercy and judgment are not vainly commemo- 
rated by the Church?’’t While, therefore, it was believed that this 
was a matter which did not interest the dead, there was no disposition 
in the Church to approve of any thing inhuman or extravagant with re- 
spect to the burial of the body. ‘The Parthians used to give their dead 
to be devoured by birds and beasts. ‘The rigid and inhuman sect of the 
stoics was indifferent, whether the body were to rot below or above 
ground. It was men like Lucretius and Lucian, who thought that 
nothing would remain after death, who chiefly ridiculed the care of the 
dead. 

During the ages of faith, there was, in the minds of men, a deep and 
profound tenderness, an amiable and loving susceptibility, which admit- 
ted of nothing harsh or repulsive to the intimate feelings of our poor 
humanity. ‘‘Mary Magdalen,” says St. John of the Cross, ‘deserved 
to be the first to behold Jesus Christ after his resurrection, because she 
remained the last by his sepulchre.’’ ‘The bodies of the faithful,”’ 
says St. Augustin, ‘‘are not to be despised and cast out, since they were 
the organs and vessels used by the Holy Spirit. Dear and venerable is 
a paternal vest or ring; and in like manner should we honour the body 
which was more joined and familiar to us than any garment which we 
wear, which served not as an external ornament or assistance, but which 
belonged to the very nature of man. Our Lord commended the woman 
who had prepared ointments for his burial; and in the Gospel, he is 
commemorated with praise who diligently and reverently gave him 
sepulture.’’+ For the same reason were they blessed by King David 


* De Civitate Dei, lib. i. 12. De Cura pro Mortuis. ; eles 
+ De Cura pro Mortuis. t De Civit. Dei, lib. 1. 13, 


AGES OF FAITH, 297 


who buried the dry bones of Saul and Jonathan, because no one ever 
hated his own flesh, and what they wished to be done to themselves 
when deprived of sense, they did to others who were in that condition.* 

The primitive Christians kept their dead exposed during three days, 
clothed in precious habits, and watched over them in prayer during the 
time. ‘Then they carried them to the tomb, bearing lighted tapers, and 
singing hymns expressive of their hope of the resurrection. ‘They bu- 
ried with them either the ensignia of their dignity or the instruments of 
their martyrdom, or phials full of their blood, or the acts of their mar- 
tyrdom, or crosses, or the book of the Gospel. ‘The body was placed 
with the face regarding the East.t 

St. Anthony, though alone in the desert, having brought out from the 
cell the dead body of St. Paul the Hermit, sung the hymns and psalms, 
according, as St. Jerome says, to the Christian tradition.t St. Jerome 
mentions the lights that were borne at the funeral of St. Paula, and no- 
tice of them occurs also in the account of that of St. Cyprien.| 

The form of monastic burial corresponded with the simplicity of the 
religious life. We read in the history of the church of Durham, that 
when any monk was dead there, he was dressed in his cowl and habit, 
and boots were put on his legs, and immediately he was carried to a 
chamber called the dead man’s chamber, where he remained till night. 
At night he was removed thence into St. Andrew’s Chapel adjoining to 
the same chamber, and there the body remained till eight o’clock in the 
morning. ‘The night before the funeral, two monks, either in kindred 
or kindness the nearest to him, were appointed by the prior to be espe- 
cial mourners, sitting all night on their knees at the dead man’s feet. 
Then were the children of the Ambrie sitting on their knees in stalls on 
either side of the corpse, appointed to read David’s Psalter, all night 
over incessantly, till eight in the morning, when the body was conveyed 
to the chapter-house, where the prior and the whole convent met it, and 
there did say their dirge and devotion; and then the dead corpse was 
carried by the monks into the centrygarth, where it was buried, and 
there was but one peal rung for him.§ 

Yet the renown of sanctity, and the devotion of the people, often ren- 
dered the burial of the religious, scenes of astonishing interest. Neither 
the pomp of the funeral of kings, nor the triumphs of the ancient con- 
querors, were more solemn than the convoy of the body of the humble 
St. Martin to the Monastery of Marmoutiers on the Loire, in the year 
397. There were more than two thousand monks present who had 
been his disciples, besides a distinct choir of virgins and an innumerable 
multitude of devout people. 

The body of the blessed St. Francis is placed in a vault under the 
Marble Chapel in the great Church at Assissi. It stands in an upright 
posture; but the vault having been shut up by Gregory IX. no one can 
enter to behold it. A small opening, however, is left, through which a 
person may look by the light of a lamp burning in it. In the convent 
RS ties LP LE ee SON Cel RCE cee Vee ee? eas nnONON en sie. 2 


* De Cura pro Mortuis. + Benedict. XIV. de Canonizatione Servorum Dei, lib. i. 

+S. Hieronymi Vita S. Pauli Eremit. 

| Joan. Devoti Institut. Canon. lib. ii. lit. vii. § 1. 

§ The Ancient Rites and Monuments of the Monastical and Cathedral Church of 
Durham, p. 89. 

Vou. Il.—38 


298 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


of the poor Clares at Assissi, in a vault under the high altar, lies the 
body of St. Clare, with a lamp burning before the opening into it. This 
was an ancient custom, as may be collected from the mode of episcopal 
burial in the thirteenth century, according to the description of the tomb 
of a bishop of Angers. ‘‘ He was buried in the mitre in which he had 
been consecrated, his crosier was by his side, and on his breast was 
placed the chalice, and a lead paten, containing wine and bread, and in 
this instance, behind his head there was a kind of channel, in which were 
a lamp lighted with oil, so that when the sarcophagus was closed, the 
light of that burning lamp shone within upon the body through an 
opening.’’* 

Camden and Weever relate that, at the suppression and demolition of 
the abbeys in York, burning lamps were found in many tombs, the flame 
of which it was said could not be extinguished by wind or water. 

This practice seems to have greatly struck the poetic imagination of 
the Minstrel, who has so grandly described the midnight opening of the 
grave of Michael Scott in Melrose Abbey.— 


‘* ,o, warrior! now the cross of red 
Points to the grave of the mighty dead; 
Within it burns a wondrous light, 

To chase the spirits that love the night.” 


These are the monk’s words to Sir William of Delorain. And when 
the grave-stone had been raised, we read of the lamp within the tomb, 
that “ 

‘<No earthly flame blaz’d e’er so bright, 
It shone like Heaven’s own blessed light, 
Show’d the monk’s cowl, and visage pale, 
Danced on the dark-brow’d warrior’s mail, 
And kiss’d his waving plume.” 


What follows is truly beautiful and solemn :— 


‘‘ Before their eyes the wizard lay, 
As if he had not been dead a day. 
His hoary beard in silver roll’d, 
He seem’d some seventy winters old; 
A palmer’s amice wrapp’d him round, 
With a wrought Spanish baldric bound, 
Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea, 
His left hand held his book of might; 
A silver cross was in his right; 
The lamp was placed beside his knee : 
High and majestic was his look, 
At which the fellest fiends had shook; 
And all unruffled was his face: 
They trusted his soul had gotten grace. 
And the priest pray’d fervently and loud: 
With eyes averted prayed he ; 
He might not endure the sight to see 
Of the man he had lov’d so brotherly.” 


In the grave of Charles of Trier, grand master of the Teutonic knights, 
were deposited, by his express orders, the life and prophecies of St. 
Brigitte. ‘This was that just and great man, whose bitterest enemies 


* Guillelmi Majoris Episcopi Andegav. Gesta apud Dacher. Spicileg, tom. x. 


AGES OF FAITH. 299 


could never charge him with a single fault.* ‘The extraordinary respect 
shown to many bishops at their death, forms a remarkable feature in 
history. St. Hugh, of Lincoln, the Burgundian, was carried to his grave 
at Lincoln by three kings. When St. Medard, Bishop of Noyon, died, 
the king, Clotaire, was present, and he assisted afterwards in person to 
carry the body to Soissons. And, as Don Savedra remarks, the dead 
body of that brave prelate, Gilles d’Albornos, passed from Rome to To- 
ledo on the shoulders of the nations, as well friends as enemies.t 

We may learn the form of collegiate burial from the account which 
is given of the customs that used to be observed in the English College 
at Douai. ‘¢At the burial of any of our members, the whole commu- 
nity attended in a very solemn procession from the College Church to 
that of the parish, where high mass was sung. ‘The corpse was carried 
by the schoolfellows and companions of the deceased ; a priest was borne 
on the shoulders of his fellow priests ; and a dozen or twenty scholars 
surrounded the bier with lighted flambeaux. At the head of the proces- 
sion went the priest, deacon, and subdeacon, vested for mass, with aco- 
lyths, thurifers, and our own choir, in surplices. ‘The students followed, 
two and two, in the order of the classes, wearing cassocks.”’ 

The Roman ritual prescribes, that at the funeral of young persons, the 
bells should not be tolled in a lugubrious manner, but that they should 
rather be rung, so as to produce a festive sound.{ ‘This holy pomp of 
burial did not depend upon the rank of the deceased. In every country, 
during the middle ages, as in Spain or Portugal at the present day, the 
funerals of a poor tradesman or mechanic were, in their external form and 
appearance, often more splendid than those of potent peers or wealthy 
gentlemen. Though many of them could not even afford a coffin, yet 
their biers would be surrounded by a blaze of light streaming from hun- 
dreds of wax torches, each as thick as a man’s arm—for all working 
men, as we have formerly shown, had enrolled themselves in a frater- 
nity, and the expense on these occasions was always borne by the whole 
society.|| In the case of poor persons who had no such assistance, the 
Roman ritual requires that the priests of the parish should furnish tapers 
at their own expense, that so venerable a rite may never be omitted 
through any unworthy regard to economy.§ 

The work of corporal mercy, which consisted in burying the dead, 
used to be performed, as in Italy at the present day, by noblemen and 
persons of the highest condition, who, through devotion, used to form 
confraternities for that purpose. Spenser describes this custom— 

‘‘ Others had charge of them now being dead, 
In seemely sort their corses to engrave, 
And deck with dainty flowres their brydall bed, 
That to their heavenly spouse both sweet and brave 
They might appeare, when he their soules shall save, 
The wondrous workmanship of God’s own mould, 


Whose face he made all beastes to fear, and gave 
All in his hand, even dead we honour should.” ** 


With respect to the funerals of great nobles and kings, in the middle 


* Voigt, Geschichte Preussens, iv. 381. + Christian Prince, ii. 559. 
+ De Exequiis Parvulorum. || Letters to Osorius. § De Exequiis. 
** Faery Queene, i. 10. 


300 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ages, if there was often a more magnificent pageant attending them, the 
pomp was still always ecclesiastic, and almost monastical, never secular 
or military. ‘The Burning Chapel, so called from the quantity of lights 
which were placed round the body previous to interment; the ceremo- 
nial of sprinkling it with holy water; the vigils and prayers; the attend- 
ance of the clergy of all orders, both regular and secular; corresponded 
with the character of men, so many of whom expired on sack-cloth and 
ashes. 

“‘King Charles V. of France, (says Christine de Pisan) was won- 
drously afflicted on the death of his queen; and although the virtue of 
constancy was greater in him than in most men, this departure caused 
him such grief, that never before or after did any event produce the 
same effect in him; for much they loved each other with great love. 
The king, who loved the body, thought of the soul by devout prayers, 
masses, vigils, and psalters, and great alms. The body was carried 
solemnly, according to the usage of kings and queens,—clothed, adorn- 
ed, and crowned,—on a rich bed of cloth of gold, surmounted with a 
canopy ; and thus it was conveyed in great procession to the Church 
of our Lady. Four hundred torches, each of six pounds of wax, burned 
there. Monks of all orders went before the body, and our princes walked 
after it, clothed in black.’’* 

These sad pageants on the death of kings, were not without a high 
moral dignity, and a most salutary effect upon the minds of men. Poets 
discerned this, as when Martial d’ Auvergne, in his Vigils, relates the 
death of Charles VII.; and, after describing the pomp of the funeral and 
the grief of all France, concludes thus :— 


‘¢ Ainsi le regard de ce monde 
Aprés qu’on a eué grand liesse 
Tousjours en pleurs et deuil redonde, 
Et la joye finit en tristesse. + 


Weever, in the discourse prefixed to his great work, laments, in bitter 
terms, on grounds of social policy, the error and practice introduced 
after ‘‘ the reformation,’’ which caused all the ceremonial rites of obse- 
quies to be laid aside as a fruitless vanity; and he makes this remark, 
‘¢that although the manner of burial and the pomp of obsequies be rath- 
er comforts to the living than helps to the dead: and although all these 
ceremonies be despised by our parents on their death-beds, yet should 
they not be neglected by us their children or nearest of kindred, upon 
their interments.”’ 

As when the soul was departing, so also when the body was descend- 
ing into the grave, the prayers of the Church employed the thoughts 
of the assistants. Unknown to the middle ages was that custom of the 
Athenians which has been revived in modern times by the infidels of 
France, of choosing some distinguished man of the city to pronounce a 
panegyric over the dead at their burial, zawoy cov xpéxovea, as Thu- 
cydides styles it.t But instead of this vain parade of rhetoric,— 


“The mass was sung, and prayers were said 
And solemn requiem for the dead ; 


* Chap. 1. { Les Vigiles de la Mort du Roy Charles VII. { Lib. ii. 34. 


AGES OF FAITH. 301 


And bells told out their mighty peal 
For the departed spirit’s weal.” 

The first Christians made a wail for their dead, as at the funeral of St. 
Stephen, of whom we read, ‘‘ Fecerunt planctum magnum super eum.’’* 
Yet it became the custom, in a very early age of the Church, to sup- 
press all public lamentations. St. Jerome testifies that at funerals it 
was usual to sing allelujah. In later times, however, it was found 
necessary to provide against a return to the ancient practice of the 
heathen mourners,—so prone are men at all times to succumb from the 
supernatural elevation of faith. ‘The Pagan excessive wail for the dead 
was strictly forbidden by the canons, as may be seen in Burchard. 
‘‘ Nothing (say they) should be sung but psalms and prayers for the 
soul, and kurie eleison.’”” Among the interrogations on the visitation 
of a bishop in the tenth century, we read, ‘* Whether any one has sung 
over a dead man in the night diabolic songs, or drank or eat, or seemed 
to rejoice at his death, or if dead bodies were kept with nocturnal vigils 
in any other place besides the church?’’ By a synod in that century, 
the clergy are commanded to forbid such customs, and all laughter over 
the dead. ‘*Laics, (say the canons) who observe funeral vigils, should 
do it with fear and trembling and reverence. No one there should pre- 
sume to sing diabolic songs, or to dance, or make jests, which the 
Pagans learned to practise from the devil. For who does not perceive 
that it is diabolic, not only alien from the Christian religion, but even 
contrary to human nature, there to sing, rejoice, get drunk, and be dis- 
solved in laughter, laying aside all piety and affection of charity, as if 
rejoicing at a brother’s death, where grief and lamentation with weeping 
ought to resound for the loss of a dear brother. Therefore, such insane 
joy and pestiferous singing must be altogether prohibited on the author- 
ity of God. But if any one desires to sing, let him sing kurie eleison, 
otherwise let him keep silence.” 

When the moderns take notice of any particular abuse connected with 
religion existing in society at present, they confidently ascribe it to the 
spirit of the middle ages. But with a very little knowledge of history 
it is easy to discern the error of such an opinion. Religion, during the 
middle ages, was engaged in an incessant struggle to abolish the cor- 
ruptions which had existed before its arrival: and perhaps there is evi- 
dence to prove, that even in the tenth century there was a more delicate 
sense of what was, or was not, in unison with the spirit of Christianity 
and the mysteries of faith, and in consequence of the greater power of 
the Church to correct evils, a much more correct and effective discipline 
than can be found at present. 

Reader! more lines I will not waste in setting forth the form of 
funeral rites—for other subjects so thicken upon us, that on this [ can- 
not longer dwell. We have seen the dead man committed to the earth, 
with the ceremonies which were attached to his office and conditon. 
‘¢ No more his bed he leaves ere the last angel-trumpet blow.”” We 
may conclude in the style of Homer—Thus did they bury the hero and 
the saint. 


* Acts viii. 2. 


2A 


302 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


CHAPTER VIII. 


RETURNING now from the sad spectacle of the natural side of death, 
let us see what the history of the middle ages records respecting the 
comfort which was reserved for these mourners in the great mysteries 
of our holy religion. 

We have seen the character which death assumed during the ages of 
faith, attending the sufferer from sickness to the grave, where, on mere 
natural grounds, it would have been reasonable to suppose that all offices 
respecting him were terminated, and all the duties of the survivors ful- 
filled, whose lips his name, however once cherished and familiar, was 
never again to pass. ‘hus it was in the ancient world amidst the dark- 
ness and gloom of the night of heathenism, when, as Pliny says, 
«‘men loved, or rather pretended to love, only the living, and did not 
even pretend to love any but those who were prosperous: for both the 
wretched and the dead were alike forgotten.””** A man of extraordinary 
genius and renown like Cicero, indeed, might vainly flatter himself with 
the thought of the fame which awaited him, and say, in allusion to his 
death, ‘‘ Longum illud tempus quum non ero, magis me movet, quam 
hoc exiguum.’’ But this boast only rendered him obnoxious to the 
reproof which the same philosopher had passed upon others, saying, 
‘¢Quoniam hee plausibilia non sunt, ut in sinu gaudeant, gloriosé loqui 
desinant.’’t ‘This was, in truth, a delusion too palpable to impart con- 
solation to any heart. ‘The fact was no less stubborn because sung in 
immortal verse by poets, that when any one died, all the benevolence 
of men, as Stesichorus said, perished, 


Savovos dvdpds rao’ Orne” GvSponav vapors. 
p p p 


‘Time will abate thy grief,” says Alcestis, about to die, to her hus- 
band: ‘* the dead are nothing:”’ or, as the later poet expressed it, 


‘‘ When we die, we are only ashes and a shade.’’+ 


But were not those who still continued to divide time by calends in 
possession of some comfort after the death of friends? Yes, as the son 
of Nestor says, ‘‘ This was the privilege of mourning mortals, to cut 
off the hair and to stain the cheek with tears.’’|| 

To persons at all conversant with Christian history, one need scarcely 
observe that the idea of death, in the mind of those who were its wit- 
nesses, had undergone a change no less complete than that which affect- 
ed the sentiments of those who experienced it themselves. The mod- 
erns, indeed, seduced by the ravings of an ignorant fanaticism, and 
originally encouraged to attend to them by the artful policy of flagitious 
potentates, who thirsted for the plunder of property that had been con- 
secrated to sacred purposes, were so unhappy as to renounce the faith 
of the holy catholic church, in respect to the assistance of the dead and 
the consolation of those who mourned for them. ‘To avaricious and 
insensible hearts it was a delightful prospect which opened, when it was 


* Epist. lib. ix. 9. + Tuscul. iii, 51. } Hor. Carm. iv. 7. | Od. iv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 303 


announced that paternal inheritances were no longer to bring with them 
the incumbrance of solemn rites, ‘‘est sine sacris hereditas.” 

In recording the work of destruction which followed the adoption of 
the new opinions, the Protestant historians supply abundant evidence of 
the pious solicitude with which men in ages of faith had provided for the 
relief of those who had risen from flesh to spirit, and for the consola- 
tion and advantage of their posterity. ‘The mouldering ruins of those 
chantries and holy chapels, which give such an interest to our woods 
and mountains, still attest it, and the solemn language of the statutes 
preserved in such institutions as were suffered to remain under an alter- 
ed form, still supplies an exercise for the ingenious facility with which, 
according to the new moral philosophy, men can escape from the obli- 
gation of accomplishing their vow. 

From the birth of Christianity prayer for the dead was observed as a 
divine tradition and a deposit of faith. Miles, the Protestant Oxford 
editor of the works of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, acknowledged the fact in 
these words: ‘It is most true that the prayer and offering for the dead 
prevailed in the church from the time of the apostles.” ‘That anniver- 
sary prayers for the dead were observed, appears from Tertullian.* By 
the conclusion which St. Perpetua was led to draw from her two visions, 
it is clear that the church in that early age believed the doctrine of the 
expiation of certain sins after death, and that she prayed for the faithful 
departed. We see too, that the parents of St. Agnes used to watch by 
night at her sepulchre. St. Augustin, after remarking that in the Book 
of Maccabees it is read, that sacrifice was offered for the dead, adds, 
‘«‘But if this had not been read in the ancient scriptures, it is not a little 
matter that the authority of the universal church is conspicuous in this 
custom, where the commendation of the dead occurs in the prayers of 
the priest which are offered at the altar of God.”’t St. Ambrose says, 
‘‘ that the faithful ought not so much to deplore the souls of the depart- 
ed, as to accompany them with their prayers, that they ought not to 
draw an argument for tears, but a subject for recommendation to the 
Lord ;’’{ and St. Chrysostom says, ‘that they should assist the dead, 
not with lamentations but with prayers, supplications, and alms.”’|| St. 
Augustin says of his deceased mother, ‘She did not command us to 
provide aromatics for her dead body, an especial monument, an ances- 
tral tomb; but she only desired that she might be had in memory at 
thy altar, O God, whence she knew that Holy Victim was dispensed, 
by means of which the handwriting that was against us has been de- 
stroyed. Inspire thy servants, O Lord, that as many as read this 
may remember thy servant Monica with her husband Patricius at thy 
altar.”§ This was to provide against that purifying trial which may 
follow death, and against that day of which the prophets spoke, when 
the Lord should wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of 
Sion, and obliterate the blood from the midst of them with the spirit 
of judgment and with the spirit of burning, when he should sit burn- 
ing and purifying as if gold and silver, and should cleanse the sons of 


* Lib. de Monogamia. Id. de Corona Militis, cap. 3. 
+ De Cura pro Mortuis. : t Ad Faustin. ii. Epist. 8. 
{ Hom. xli. in Epist. i. ad Corinth. § Confess. lib. xix. cap. 13. 


304 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Levi, and melt them as gold and silver, when the sacrifice of Juda and 
Jerusalem should be pleasing to him as in the primitive days.* The 
fervour and charity of the middle ages appear in nothing more conspi- 
cuous than in the zeal of men to assist their departed friends. Many of 
the epistles in the collection of those of St. Boniface, are occupied in 
transmitting, or in requiring the names of priests and laymen deceased, 
that they may be commemorated at the altar. The friendship of the 
holy men, whom missionary zeal had scattered through distant regions, 
finds only one consolation in the thought that they are always united 
both in life and death in the heart of Jesus. Thus Doto writes as fol- 
lows to the Bishop Lullo: « quamvis terrarum longitudine separati vide- 
mur, tamen et terrarum longinquitas non dividit mente, quos charitas 
divina conjunxit in corde.”+ On this principle they might have used 
the words of Pindar, expressing their belief that the dead take an inter- 
est in the fortune of their surviving relations on earth. 


Kataxpurtres 8° ob xdves 
Svyyovey xedvaw yap. 


The celebration of the memory of the dead on the third, seventh, 
thirtieth, and anniversary day, is a most ancient institution, as appears 
from St. Augustin and other fathers. Amalarius and Alcuin explain the 
mystic reason of these days as follows: ‘the third day after the obit,” 
say they, ‘‘ is celebrated to express our trust in the future resurrection, 
from the memory of our Saviour’s rising on the third day ; the seventh 
day expresses a general number or a totality, on which we pray that all 
their sins may be forgiven.” ‘+ Luctus mortui Septem dies,’’ says the 
Scripture ; || and thus the sons of Jacob celebrated the obsequies of their 
father during seven days ;§ or because the seventh day is the sabbath, 
we pray the Lord of the sabbath to give them eternal rest. The thir- 
tieth day is observed in conformity to the venerable examples of the Old 
Testament, as when the children of Israel wept for Aaron during the 
space of thirty days, and when Moses died they wept for him thirty 
days in the plains of Moab. And the anniversary is repeated, that in 
the event of their being still exposed to the purifying flames, they may 
be assisted by the suffrages of the faithful, for much it avails them, there 
to be the object of the prayers of such 


* Whose wills 
Have root of goodness in them.’’** 


Cardinal Bona, speaking of the office of the dead, says, ‘‘that it was 
by an especial Providence that learned men, from the very age of the 
apostles, employed themselves in describing the received rites of the 
church, because the Holy Spirit foresaw that heresy in the latter ages 
would attempt to pervert and confound all things.’”’tt The office of the 
dead begins absolutely without an invocation of the divine assistance, or 
glorification of the most holy Trinity, or benediction, or any rite indi- 
cating joy, ‘in order,’ as Amalarius says, ‘‘ to correspond with what 


*S. Augustini de Civit. Dei, lib. xx. c. 25. + Bonifacii Epist. lxxxiv. 
t Olymp. lib. vii. | Eccles. 22. 13. § Genes. i. 10. 
** Dante, Purg. xi. tf De Divina Psalmod. p. 271. 


AGES OF FAITH. 305 


39 


took place at the death of our Lord.” Cardinal Bona observes, “ that 
generally when we pray for the dead, we are reminded of our own end 5 
they are dead and we are also to die, they yesterday, we to-morrow.’’* 
What an advantage, then, had the pious charity of our ancestors provi- 
ded for the living also in their foundations for the spiritual wants of the 
dead? «* Memorare novissima tua, et in eternum non peccabis.”’ 

The anniversaries of kings were celebrated in Gaul in a very early 
age. Celebrated were those of Clovis, in the church of St. Peter, now 
of St. Genevieve, that of his son Childebert, in the monastery of St. 
Vincent, now of St. Germain des Prés, and that of Dagobert, in the 
church of St. Denis, of which there was no monument to trace the 
beginning.t In the sacristy of the cathedral of Ravenna, I saw several 
very ancient inscriptions in stone, to commemorate the obligation of the 
canons, to celebrate a solemn mass of requiem on certain anniversaries, 
which it was the object of these inscriptions to specify. Luther of 
Brunswick, grand master of the ‘Teutonic order, in his last illness desir- 
ed himself to be removed to Kenigsberg, in order to make his devout 
prayer in the cathedral which he had lately assisted to erect. He gave 
orders that he should be buried in the midst of the choir, and that over his 
grave a light should for ever burn, for maintaining which he left funds, 
and that a dole and a feast should be always made on the anniversary 
of his death, when a solemn requiem should be sung. ‘This was ‘ the 
pure and wise master,’’ as he was styled, ‘the poet, the just man, the 
mild ruler, the devout friend of the monks and of the poor.”’{ Suger 
composed lessons for matins recording the virtues of Louis-le-Gros, 
which were read in churches where his anniversary was celebrated. It 
became a general custom to found and erect chapels, and sometimes 
even monasteries, on fields of battle, where prayer should be constantly 
offered up for the souls of the slain. Battle Abbey, in Sussex, was a 
celebrated instance, and in Switzerland, the chapels of Mortgarten and 
Morat have been visited by most travellers in that country. After the 
ereat battle at Rudau, in 1370, the Teutonic knights erected three cha- 
pels in which masses and vigils were to be performed for the souls of 
the fallen; two were on the banks of the Rudau, and the third on the 
Laptau, and on the spot where the heroic marshal fell, the grand-master 
placed a vast monument, on which the names of the heroes were in- 
scribed.|| ‘The poor gained nothing by the abolition of these anniversa- 
ries consequent on the setting up of a new religion. King Edward L., 
when he founded obits for his queen Eleanor, in Westminster Abbey, 
provided also that money should be given to the poor that came to the 
solemnization of the same. King Henry V. founded perpetually one 
day every week, a dirge with nine lessons, and a mass to be celebrated 
in the same abbey church, for the soul of King Richard the Second, 
and he appointed that on each of these days six shillings and eightpence 
should be given to the poor people, and on his anniversary, that twenty 
pounds in pence should be distributed to the most needful. ‘These 
solemn anniversaries, like that of the great baron, mentioned by Dante, 
as he whose name and worth the festival of Thomas still reveres, be- 


* De Divina Psalmod. p. 265. + Mabillon Prefat. in iii. Secul. Benedict. § 6. 
t Voigt Geschichte Preussens, iv. 512. f Id. v. 220, 
Vor. I1.—39 2a2 


306 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


cause commemorated on that day,* were the means of multiplying those 
sublime and consoling offices of religion, in which men experienced the 
purest delight, as well as the most salutary impressions ; for of them we 
may say with truth, ** Hee sunt solatia, hee fomenta summorum dolo- 
rum.’ ‘Then it was that they were led to meditate on— 


“That day of wrath, that dreadful day, 
When heaven and earth shall pass away ;” 


to consider within their hearts 


‘What power shall be the sinner’s stay ? 
How shall he meet that dreadful day 2 
When shrivelling like a parched scroll, 

The flaming heavens together roll ; 
When louder yet, and yet more dread, 
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead ;” 


and to pray devoutly, in silence weeping, 


“Oh! on that day, that wrathful day, 
When man to judgment wakes from clay, 
Be thou the trembling sinner’s stay, 
Though heaven and earth sha!l pass away 


And what did the church teach the while, respecting the efficacy of 
these suffrages in behalf of the dead? You may learn this from the 
canons of the church in Ireland, which were passed in about the eighth 
century. ‘The Synod says, ‘In four modes does the church offer for 
the souls of the dead. For the greatly good, they are thanksgivings in 
whom the oblation hath nothing to obliterate; for the greatly sinful, 
they are consolations to the living; for those who were not greatly 
good, they conduce to their obtaining full remission ; and for those who 
were not greatly sinful, to their pains being rendered more tolerable.’’t 
This was conformable to the words of St. Augustin; ‘* For some men 
after their death, the prayers of the church or of pious people are heard ; 
but it is for those, who after their baptism, neither lived so ill as to be 
judged unworthy of such mercy, nor yet so well as not to need such 
mercy. t Besides these anniversaries and the solemn season, which 
was expressly devoted by the church for the discharge of this sacred 
duty, there were innumerable occasions on which it was usual in the 
middle ages to apply to it. ‘*'The church,” says St. Augustin, ‘as 
a faithful mother, prays for all her children departed, that they who left 
no parents or friends may still have the benefit of suffrage.’’|| In many 
countries, as in France, it was the custom for ** le Clocheteur des Tré- 
passés’’ to go about the streets at night with a bell, chanting out ina 
solemn tone, 


9 


“« Réveillez-vous, gens qui dormez, 

Priez Dieu pour les 'T'répassés.” 
Marchangy says, ‘that, in some provinces, funds used to be left by 
will to churches for the purpose of keeping up a cry, every Monday at 
one o’clock after midnight, to the sound of two bells for the commemo- 


* Parad. xvi. n 

+ Capitula Selecta Canonum Hibernens. ex libro xv. cap. ii. apud Dacher. Spicileg. 
tom. ix. 

t De Civitate Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 24. | De Cura pro Mortuis. 


AGES OF FAITH. 307 


ration of the dead.’ It used also to be a pious custom on board pas- 
sage boats, as we still find in those which take passengers from Naples 
to Sorrento, and in many others which ply upon the rivers of the north 
of Italy, to ask a subscription for masses for the souls in purgatory. 

As a conclusion to this chapter, let us hear the affecting words in 
which Alred, Abbot of Rivaulx, speaks of his love for a departed friend, 
who, as he says, ‘‘had admitted him to his friendship from the very 
commencement of his conversion to a religious life.”’ With this pas- 
sage the first book of his Speculum Charitatis ends, and it is highly 
worthy of our attention in this place, as revealing the thoughts and minds 
of men during the ages of faith, with respect to the mourning of surviv- 
ing friends, and to the reasons of the duty which devolved upon them 
to pray earnestly for the departed soul. ‘* Certainly,” he exclaims, 
‘cas far as my eyes can discern, O Lord, there was nothing in thy ser- 
vant which could be an impediment to him in passing to thy embraces ; 
but no man knows what is within man unless the spirit of man which is 
in him; whereas thy eye, O Lord, penetrates to the dividing asunder of 
soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the 
heart; and as a certain worthy servant said, ‘ Ve etiam laudabili vite 
hominum, si remota pietate discutiatur.’ Behold then, O Lord, the 
source of my fear and of my tears. Attend to them, O thou most sweet 
and merciful Saviour! Receive them, O thou my only hope, my one 
and only refuge, my God! Receive, O Lord, the sacrifices which I 
offer to thee for my beloved friend, and whatever stains may remain in 
him, either pardon or impute them to me. Strike me: on me let thy 
anger fall ; only hide not thy blessed face from him; withdraw not thy 
sweetness from him. O my Lord, let him experience the consolations 
of thy mercy, which he so earnestly desired, in which he so securely 
confided, to which he commended himself with such sweet vehemence, 
during that night when, after the other brethren had withdrawn, and one 
only was left to watch by him, he was heard to break forth with those 
repeated words, ‘ Misericordiam, misericordiam, misericordiam!’ He 
was endeavoring,” as they say, ‘‘ to sing the whole of that verse, ‘ Mis- 
ericordiam et judicium cantabo tibi, Domine ;’ but recalled by the sweet- 
ness of that first word, he could proceed no farther, and so rested in the 
repetition ; and when he saw the brother, who sat by his bed, not ap- 
pearing to be equally impressed with a sense of its sweetness, he caught 
his hand, and, pressing it with earnest emotion, repeated again, ‘ Miseri- 
cordiam, misericordiam.’ 'That soul seems to have been dissolved in 
ineffable joy at the thought of such grace, feeling that its sins were 
absorbed in this immense ocean of divine mercy, so that nothing was 
left to oppress or terrify the conscience. As for me, I will follow thee 
with my tears, with my prayers, with the sacrifice of our Mediator. 
And do thou, O Father Abraham, extend thy arms again and again to 
receive this poor one of Christ, this other Lazarus, receiving and cher- 
ishing him as he returns from the miseries of this life; and to me also, 
who so loved him, grant a place of rest along with him in thy bosom.” 


308 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


CHAPTER IX. 


Wuen Ulysses was conducting Neoptolemus to Troy, the vessel 
passed within sight of the tomb of the great Afacides, and in the paint- 
ing which Quintus Calaber gives of this voyage, there is an admirable 
stroke of nature, truly Homeric, in reference to it: 


Tovot 5 dp “Idatwy dpéav paivovro xdrwvar, 
Xpvoa re, xav SmrvSevov Eos, xai Lyvas opm. 
TvuBos ¢ AiaxiSao Saippovos’ GAAG few overs 
Lids Aakprao nvxapporéwy gw Suu 

Ae&e Neon torsua, tva ot Len mévSos aéén 
Ovpds ev or7nSeoor.* 


In the ages of faith, as well as in more ancient days, it was a work 
of humanity and of religion, in which mourners found a sweet delight, to 
commemorate the dead even by a material monument. It was a Catho- 
lic as well as a Homeric practice, by means of sepulchres, to remind the 
living of the shortness and uncertainty of human life, to raise a mound 
or a symbol upon the spot on which the brave or good had fallen, to pile 
up a tomb upon the shore of the wild sea, 


avdpos Svoryvovo, xav ECoOMEVvOLOL MUSéECSac.T 


Euripides says, “that the traveller, as he passes by the tomb of Al- 
cestis, will thither bend his devious way, with reverence gaze, and with 
a sigh smite on his breast.”’ And in the early and middle ages of Christ- 
ian history, to behold a sepulchre, and to supplicate God over a particu- 
lar grave, would be the object of long and painful journeys, 

Who knows not the sublime and wondrous event which of itself has 
served to designate a long period of the ages which we are attempting to 
illustrate? Who has not continually on his tongue the ages of the cru- 
sades; the ages in which men renounced their homes, their country, their 
friends, engaged in all the horrors of a long and perilous navigation, 
exposed themselves to the dangers of an Asiatic and pestilential climate, 
willingly rushed forward to encounter death in every form and circum- 
stance that could render it painful, and all this for a tomb? 

In such an age it was natural that the spirit of mourning should have 
developed itself in every gracious and solemn form that harmonized with 
the genius of love and memory, that it should have perpetuated, by ma- 
terial monuments on this earth, some traces of the affection of children, 
and of parents, and of friends, that it should have multiplied those sepul- 
chres which relate the untimely departure of heroic worth, which exhibit 
the overflowings of youthful sorrow, or the calm and brief expressions 
of experienced wisdom, tombs which recall the images of youth, and 
beauty, and goodness, 

“at sight wherof 


Tears often stream forth, by remembrance wak’d 
Whose sacred stings the piteous only feel.’+ 


pr ten ra relat ace el ele oa eh ts ls ie) le ee 


* Od. vii. 401. + Od. xi. 76. + Dant. Purg, xii. 


’ 


AGES OF FAITH. 309 


Alban Butler remarks, ‘* that the primitive Christians were solicitous 
not to bury their dead among the infidels, as appears from Gamaliel’s 
care in this respect, mentioned by Lucian in his account of the discov- 
ery of St. Stephen’s relics, as also from St. Cyprian, who makes it a 
crime in Martialis, a Spanish bishop, to have buried Christians in pro- 
fane sepulchres.”’* ‘To be buried near the holy martyrs was a great 
object of their desire; this was the wish of St. Ambrose in dying, for 
which S. Maximus assigns the following reason: ** Hoc & majoribus pro- 
visum est, ut sanctorum ossibus nostra corpora sociemus, ut dum illos 
tartarus metuit, nos pena non tangat.’”’ In the cemetery of St. Calixtus, 
pope and martyr, on the Appian way, were buried more than one hun- 
dred and seventy-four thousand martyrs and forty-six popes. With what 
awe, with what unutterable reverence did I descend into the catacombs 
of St. Calixtus, of St. Cyriacus, and of St. Marcellinus, preceded by the 
friar holding the small taper, which every moment seemed about to be 
extinguished by a sudden blast from some fresh passage among the som- 
bre vaults! Here I was told St. Lucia laid the body of St. Sebastian: 
there was found the body of St. Cecilia; further on was discovered the 
body of the holy martyr Maximus; on this side lay a pope, on that sev- 
eral children. O what a solemn and religious place! and how it fills the 
soul with emotions indescribable of joy and sorrow; one might call it 
Pausilypus, ravers 775 xvas, the end of grief. Truly here death hath no 
sting: the grave no victory. One would wish to lie down here in peace, 
that one’s soul might follow whither these are already gone. ‘* Hospites 
fuerunt super terram et ego: tanquam umbra subito transierunt et ego.” 
Into the catacombs of St. Calixtus one descends from the Basilica of St. 
Sebastian, and on the wall near the entrance there is an inscription on 
stone, containing the account which St. Jerome gives of this very spot: 
‘** When I was a boy studying at Rome,” says the holy doctor, ‘*I used, 
with other companions of my age and inclination, to go about diligently 
every Sunday, amidst the sepulchres of the apostles and martyrs, in the 
erypts which are excavated in the depth of the earth, having the bodies of 
the dead on both sides for walls, and where all things are so obscure, that 
one might say the prophetic word was fulfilled, ‘Descendant ad infer- 
num viventes.’ ‘The scanty light, at rare intervals admitted from above, 
only tempers the horror of the darkness, and serves to deepen the black 
night which succeeds to it. One is reminded of that Virgilian line, 


“ Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.’’+ 


In early times, none but martyrs, bishops, and abbots, were allowed 
to be buried within the church. No title of nobility conferred this priv- 
ilege, and no money was required for burial, but oblations were received 
and even enjoined by many kings. 

The Roman ritual, however, requires that the poor should be buried 
wholly gratis. The exclusion of heretics, and of such as died deprived 
of ecclesiastical peace, was a primitive discipline which was never re- 
nounced. ‘Thus at Ravenna, the sepulchres of the Arian Goths, and of 
the ministers of King Theodoric, were removed out of the churches, as 
soon as the Catholics regained possession of them; and many of these 


* S. Cypriani Epist. 68. +S. Hieronymi in Ezech. Com. cap. 40. 


310 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


are now arranged in a museum within the archiepiscopal palace. At the 
same time it may be well to remark how religion, in the middle ages, 
guarded men from contracting any superstitious opinion of the import- 
ance of burial in holy ground, and from that error which led so many 
poets of antiquity to describe the sepulchre as a place of rest for the 
body, within which the dead man reposed; as in these verses which 
Cicero ridicules :— 


** Neque sepulcrum, quo recipiat, habeat, portum corporis; 
Ubi, remissé humana vit4, corpus requiescat malis.” 


‘Is it an injury to the just if they be not buried in the cemetery of 
the church ?”’ is a question that occurs in a work ascribed to St. Anselm; 
to which the answer was made, *‘ By no means: for the whole world is 
the temple of God, which is consecrated by the blood of Christ; and 
therefore, whether they be cast out, or buried in the field, or in the wood, 
or in the marsh, or in what place soever, they are always preserved with- 
in the bosom of the Church, which is spread over the whole earth. Is it 
of advantage to the just to be buried in holy places? Places become 
sacred in which just men are buried; but to those who suffer it is of ad- 
vantage, because when their friends meet there, they are reminded by 
their monuments to offer up prayers to God for them. Is it of any ser- 
vice to the wicked to be buried in a holy place? Nay, it is rather an 
injury to be associated in sepulture with those from whom they are far 
separated in merit.’’* 

All this had been shown by St. Augustin in answer to Paulinius, 
Bishop of Nola, who had consulted him on being entreated by a certain 
widow, who desired that the dead body of her son, a faithful youth, 
might be buried in the Basilica of the blessed Confessor Felix. ‘+The 
devotion of the mother to the martyr,”’ says St. Augustine, ‘is itself 
a supplication in behalf of her son, and, therefore, it may be to his ad- 
vantage to be interred in that Basilica: adjuvat defuncti spiritum, non 
mortui corporis locus, sed ex loci memoria vivus matris affectus. It 
seems to me, that the only advantage to the dead in being buried near the 
martyrs is, that by commending them to the patronage of martyrs, the 
ardour of that supplication for them is increased.’’t 

At first, indeed, even the bishops, saints, and martyrs, were buried 
near the church; ‘‘juxta ecclesiam,’’ as Bede says, of St. Augustin’s 
body. This was in the front court, the Paradisus Ecclesiz, as at Rome; 
or in France, Ecclesiae Parvisium. The ancient canons forbid any one 
to be buried within the church itself.t Thus before many of the 
churches of Ravenna, as at the cathedral and before the Basilica of St. 
John the Baptist, stand vast sarcophaguses, in which great personages 
were buried, before it was permitted to entomb any one within the 
church. Those in the Basilica of St. Apollinare, in Classe, containing 
the ashes of the early archbishops, have been placed within during later 
ages, for originally they stood without. ‘Thus still is placed at St. Vitale 
the sepulchre of Isaac, Exarch of Ravenna, that illustrious Armenian 
who commanded armies in the East and in the West, and whose glory, 


* S. Anselmi Elucidarii, lib. ii. cap. 31. + De Cura pro Mortuis. 
} Thomassinus de Vet. et Nova Ecclesie Disciplin. pars iii. lib. i. c. 68. 


AGES OF FAITH. 311 


as the epitaph pompously sets forth, reached from the rising to the set- 
ting sun! 

Constantine was buried in the porch of the Apostles at Constantino- 
ple; Honorius in the porch of St. Peter at Rome; St. Augustin, the 
first Archbishop of Canterbury, was interred in the porch of St. Peter 
and St. Paul, which was a church of his foundation near Canterbury, 
and together with him, six other archbishops who next succeeded him, 
whose relics were afterwards removed into the Abbey Church. 

In the fourth century, bishops were buried within the church; though, 
for a long time after, only bishops, abbots, holy priests, and laics of the 
utmost sanctity, were allowed to be buried in churches.* By degrees, 
however, this salutary discipline was broken through, and persons of 
all ranks, without regard to spiritual qualifications, were admitted to be 
buried within the church; the only distinction required being, that lay- 
men should be placed with their feet towards the altar, while ecclesias- 
tics should have their heads next it, as if fronting the people. Still the 
memory of the former discipline prevailed, so far as sometimes to induce 
great princes, through humility, and as an expression of penitence, to 
cominand that their bodies should be interred without the walls. An 
instance of this occurs in the history of Suger; for we read, that when 
he proposed to rebuild the Abbey Church of St. Denis, the entrance was 
obstructed by a great massive porch, which concealed the portal. ‘This 
had been built by Charlemagne from a pious motive. Pepin his father 
was buried under that spot, not laid on his back, like other dead men, 
but prostrate, with his face against the ground, in order to denote, as he 
had said, that he wished to make amends for the excesses committed by 
his father, Charles Martel. Charlemagne, not enduring that his father 
should lie buried without the church, had built this huge porch, that by 
this contrivance he might be within it. Suger, however, had the body 
removed to another place, and the porch destroyed.t 

The Church in several synods, proposed to restore the ancient disci- 
pline respecting sepulchres, and strong measures were enforced to cor- 
rect the abuses which time and the pride of family had introduced. In 
the Council of Rheims, in the year 1583, it was decreed that no tombs 
should be erected higher than the ground, and that no statues, or mili- 
tary standards, or trophies, should be placed upon them, and that the 
dead were only to be praised in becoming language. ‘+ Que ad pietatem 
et preces pro mortuis faciendas spectent potius, quam defunctorum enar- 
randis laudibus insumantur.’’{ By the Council of Tholouse, in the year 
1590, no inscriptions or emblems were to be placed in the church but 
suchas were approved of by the bishop or archdeacon.|| The occasion 
of these statutes was the Pagan taste, which had begun to affect even 
the ancient style of sepulchral architecture. 

The tomb of the Scipios was carved in marble, and adorned with works 
of art; but the sepulchres of the martyrs were rude and solemn. In the 
catacombs, the inscriptions and emblems over the Christian graves are 
very simple—such as, ‘¢ The holy martyr, Maximus.”’—** In pace Hip- 
politus, amator pauperum.”—* Gregoria in pace.’”? Sometimes there 


* Durandus Rationale, lib. i. cap. 5. + Hist. de Suger, lib. iv. + Can. de Sepult. 
| Thomassinus de Vet. et Nova Ecclesie Disciplin. pars iii. lib. i. cap. 68. 


312 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


is an iron grating to preserve the slab, on which some saint has slept, 
from being worn away by the devout kisses of the faithful. In the 
cloisters of St. Paul, in those of St. Lorenzo and of St. Agnes extra 
muros, and in the porch of St. Maria in Trastevere, as also in one gal- 
lery in the Vatican, you see the simple inscriptions which used to be 
placed over the martyrs ; for these slabs have been removed from the 
catacombs, where they covered the apertures of the recesses in which 
the bodies lay. ‘The emblems, which are in general but rudely carved, 
are very numerous. You see a bird with a branch in its bill,—a heart, 
—crossed palms ;—a ship in full sail near a tower, on the top of which 
is a flame ;—a man holding out his arms extended in prayer ;—a boy 
riding on a dolphin ;—a barrel, and the monogram of Christ ;—a man 
preaching from a pulpit, and a bird bringing to him a branch;—an an- 
chor ;—two birds about to drink from a chalice ;—one bird feeding anoth- 
er ;—a fish, a lion, a leopard, wheels, hatchets, crooks and spears. ‘The 
interest inspired by such monuments must of course greatly exceed what 
can be generally experienced. But although we cannot expect to feel 
similar emotions from beholding the tombs of a later date, there is still, 
in those of the middle ages, a majestic simplicity, a most venerable air 
of holiness, which is enough to startle, and reduce to silent awe, the 
curious observer of our days. In the first place, the words inscribed 
upon them are generally full of sublimity. The heathen sepulchral 
inscriptions preserved in the gallery of the Vatican, are very minute in 
specifying the exact age and the abundant merits of the person, who as 
on the modern tombs, in countries that have abandoned the ancient creed, 
is always shown to have been ‘bene meritus.”” Nothing, however, in 
ancient times, bore resemblance to the vanity and bombast of the mod- 
erm epitaphs, of which that on Sir Philip Sidney in St. Paul’s, begin- 
ning, ‘‘ England, Netherland, the heavens and the arts,” may be assumed 
as the perfect model. This was not the style adopted in ages of faith. 
The tomb of Suger, in the abbey of St. Denis, consisted of a simple 
stone, raised about three feet high, on which these four words were 
inscribed—* Cy gist l’abbé Suger,’’—which gives occasion to Mabillon 
to remark how much nobler was the style of inscriptions in the middle 
ages, than that, so full of pompous affectation, which had begun to intro- 
duce itself in his time.* 

The epitaph in brass on the Black Prince, in the cathedral of Canter- 
bury, was this,—‘* Here lieth the noble Prince, Edward, the eldest son 
of the thrice-noble King Edward the Third, who died on the feast of the 
Trinity, in the year of grace, 1376: to the soul of whom, God grant 
mercy. Amen.” 

How impressive are those old English inscriptions given by Weever, 
like that at Minster in Shepey:—In the most holy name of Jesu, 
pray for the sowls of John and Margaret :’’—or those in Stone Church: 
‘‘Q merciful Jesew, have mercy on the sowl of Sir John Dew. Sweet 
Jesew, grant to William and Anne and us, everlastyng lyff. Pray yow 
hertely for charitie. Say a Pater Noster and an Ave.’’ 

Thomas Brenton, Bishop of Rochester, confessor to King Richard II. 
who travelled into many places beyond seas, and preached at Rome be- 


* De Studiis Monast. pars in. cap. 12. 


AGES OF FAITH. 313 


fore the Pope, being famous for his learning and rare endowments, was 
buried at Seale, under a marble stone, on which was his portraiture, and 
only these words were inseribed :— Credo quod Redemptor meus vi- 
vit;’’ and these figures, 1389. 

On the tomb of Sir John Lumbard, priest, in Stone Church, were 
certain Latin rhymes, beseeching whoever passed by, whether he were 
a grown man or only a boy, to pray that his soul might find mercy. In 
the north cloister of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a grave-stone without a name 
had only this inscription: ** Vixi, peccavi, penitui, nature cessi.’? In the 
Temple Church was an inscription, imploring prayer for the soul of 
Richard Wye, and only these lines added :—‘* Domine, secundum delie- 
tum meum noli me judicare. Deprecor Majestatem tuam ut tu deleas 
iniquitatem meam.’? The epitaph on King Edward the Confessor, in 
Westminster Abbey, consists of these three hexameters :-— 

Omnibus insignis virtutum laudibus Heros, 
Sanctus Edwardus Confessor, Rex venerandus ; 


Quinto die Jani moriens super Ethera scandit. 
Sursum corda. Moritur Ann. Dom. 1065.” 


The only words upon the tomb of that potent noble, William Bour- 
ehier, Earl of Eu, in Normandy, which was in the Church of Little Eas- 
ton, were these :—* Fili Dei, miserere mei; mater Dei, miserere mei.’? 
At Boston was a fair tomb, whereon were engraven in brass the names 
of John Deynes and Catherine his wife, and these two words only add- 
ed, ‘Respice, Respice !’’—an allusion probably to the prayer of the 
Passion, which begins with these words. 

The sepulchral inscriptions upon the religious, and on certain young 
students, in the Abbey of St. Alban, made by the Abbot Whethamsted, 
were of such interest and beauty in the estimation of Weever, that, 
although the brasses containing them had been plundered from the 
grave-stones, he yet inscribed them in his book, having collected them 
from the manuscript of the abbey. In Catholic countries, which have 
never witnessed the barbarous rage against the dead, their monuments 
should be objects of minute attention, and they will often repay it. I 
observed a very ancient sepulchral slab in the pavement of the old Ca- 
thedral of Ravenna, to commemorate Gregorius. There was no date or 
other notice, but only the figure of a cross, and written under it, in very 
ancient characters, “«O Crux sancta, adjuva nos.’’ In the same church 
Gerardus, archbishop, who died in the year of our Lord 113, was com- 
memorated by a simple leaden tablet. In the cathedral of Sienna 1 re- 
marked on the pavement a tomb slab, representing a bishop holding 
clasped in both hands a book open, in which was written, “ Firmiter 
credimus, simpliciter confitemur.”? There was no name or date or other 
words. In the cloisters of the Abbey of Fontenelle may still be seen 
many sepulchral stones, very small and humble, with no other ornament 
but a little Greek cross and a simple tear under it. There is no name 
engraved, but only the day, month, and year of the departure.—It was 
well for a poet or a philosopher when it devolved on monks to compose 
the inscriptions for his tomb. What pilgrim, who has visited Rome, 
has not been induced to ascend that toilsome hill on which stands the 
humble convent of St. Onufrio? Within the court are two orange trees 
of great height, reaching above the cloistered arches, and even overshad- 

Vor. I1.—40 2B 


314 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


owing the windows in the upper stage. In the church, at the left hand 
of the western door, on entering, is a small slab, on which you read 
these words :—‘‘ The bones of Torquato Tasso lie here. Lest the stran- 
ger should not know the spot, the brethren have marked it with this 
stone.” Did not the poor Hieronymites know how to write the poet’s 
epitaph ? 

In the middle ages, as in Italy and other Catholic countries at the 
present day, there was often, in sepulchral inscriptions, a kind of strug- 
gle indicated between humility and the desire of edifying the living, 
by attesting some peculiar trait in the character of the dead. Thus I 
have frequently observed some testimony of this kind: on one it would 
be, ‘Pious towards God;’’ on another, ‘A lover of the Poor;’’ on 
another, ‘Devout in the care of Temples.’? Men had not to compose 
epitaphs for persons like Timocreon of Rhodes, on whose tombs a sen- 
tence of piety would sound like a satire, or the anticipation of God’s 
judgment. On the tomb of Lodovico de Bellomonte, Bishop of Dur- 
ham, who lay buried before the high altar in that church, were engraven 
in brass certain divine and celestial sayings of the holy Scriptures, which 
he used peculiarly to select for his spiritual consolation.* 

In the Campo Santo at Pisa is a tomb associated with many historical 
recollections of saintly interest, on which the inscription, if not in the 
best style of Latinity, at least presents a singular contrast to the style of 
those Pagan epitaphs with which it is surrounded, being preserved there 
as relics of art. On this tomb, which contained the ashes of the mother 
of the Countess Matilda, we read— 


“ Quamvis peccatrix sum Domina vocata Beatrix 
In tumulo missa jaceo que Comitissa.” 


Indeed, to examine the sepulchres of the middle ages, which yet re- 
main, forms one of the most interesting employments for the leisure of 
a philosophic traveller, who, like Pausanius, after traversing Greece, 
may find it well to occupy one-half of his relation with the description of 
tombs. Where does he feel deeper emotion than, for example, on en- 
tering the cathedral of Salerno, to behold the sepulchre of that sublime 
and illustrious saint, Pope Gregory VII., who died there a fugitive, 
repeating. these words with his last breath—‘ Dilexi justitiam et odivi 
iniquitatem ; propterea morior in exilio.”’ With what a sweet melan- 
choly does one wander through the cloisters of the great monastery 
adjoining the Basilica of St. Anthony at Padua, or pass before the num- 
erous chapels in that vast church, reading, as one walks, the inscriptions 
over the learned, or the saintly or heroic dead! What a testimony do 
they furnish to the spirit and manners of Catholic times! Some com- 
memorate the warrior who united letters and philosophy with arms ; 
who, in his life time, many a noble act achieved, both by his wisdom 
and his sword. Such are the tombs of Stephen de Ripa, of the Ubal- 
dini family, and of Ascanio Zabaralla ; others, the holy and profoundly 
learned monk, who, after a long course of public teaching of theology 
in that ancient university, departed to the source of truth. These are 
chiefly to friars of the seraphic order of St. Francis, who are represented 


ELA Ee ee a ee 


* The Ancient Rites and Monuments of Durham, p. 25. 


AGES OF FAITH. 315 


teaching on their sepulchres. Others, again, as that tomb of the Polish 
knight, Adamus Zalinsky, record the studious, chaste, and valiant trav- 
eller, who had seen Africa and Asia, and who had resolved upon visit- 
ing Jerusalem, when death constrained him to leave here his toil-worn 
limbs. On one sepulchre, as on that of Andrew Arcolus, you are told 
of the mathematician and astronomer, who united zeal for science with 
piety to God. Such is the testimony to his virtue, conveyed in these 
lines— 
“ Astrorum motus omnes, arcanaque prompsit 
Dextera ; mens heret qui movet astra Deo.” 


On another, of the orator who loved peace, and who studied to pre- 
serve it to his fellow-citizens. Such is the inscription on Father Paulin, 
which is intended to transmit nothing more respecting him to posterity 
than that he loved peace and pursued it. There are tombs, as that of 
Wesling, the Mindan knight, to the learned and devoted physician, who 
had visited Egypt for the sake of studying exotic roots, and of acquiring 
a knowledge of all arts; and who, on returning, falls a victim to his 
pious labours in gratuitously tending the sick poor in a time of pesti- 
lence. ‘There are others which attest the miracles of humility and of 
seraphic ardour, which have been Wrought by the Catholie religion in 
the breasts of the learned, and of those endowed by heaven with extra- 
ordinary genius. Such is the tomb of that illustrious woman, Helen 
Cornelia Lucretia Piscopia Cornaro, who united an admirable sublimity 
of soul, and a most tender piety, to prodigious knowledge, being mis- 
tress of seven languages; so that, being greatly honoured by the princes 
of Europe, and especially by Pope Innocent XI., and after devoting her- 
self to a life of religious and philosophic contemplation, coming to Padua 
in obedience to the command of her father, she received publicly the lau- 
rel crown of philosophy, an example unparalleled within the memory of 
man in that celebrated college. There are others, too, erected over the 
diligent, innocent, amiable, and holy youth, who, in the midst of his 
academic studies, distinguished himself by his kindness to the poor, and 
his ardent desires after the heavenly country, whose only fault was too 
much application and too little care of himself. Such, or similar, is the 
character ascribed on their sepulchres to Henry de Gram the Saxon, 
Camillus Bonaventura the Roman, Ludovicus of Brixia, Frederick Rota 
of Bergamo, and a number of other young noblemen and students, who 
died during their course at that university ; and to some of whom, having 
no parents, the slab is erected by their dearest college friend. The af- 
fecting inscription on the tomb of Andrew Canzki, a young Pole, who 
died on his travels in Italy, would apply to many a pilgrim who visited 
that sacred land without ever seeing the day of return— 


“Ttaliam peragro dum sospes quinque per annos, 
Hei patrium repetens mors mihi vertit iter.” 


There are tombs which seem to admonish the living in asking indul- 
gence for the dead. Such is that tomb of John Trivulzio Magnus, in 
the church of St. Nazarus at Milan, on which is written, « Joan Jaco- 
bus Magnus Trivultius Antonii filius, qui nunquam quievit quiescit. 
Tace.’”’ And such that tomb over the beautiful Agnes in the Abbey of 
Jumiéges, on which was this short and touching epitaph—+ Cy gist 


316 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Damoiselle Agnes Seurette, en son vivant dame de beauté, Dissoudum 
et de Vernonsuo-Seine, pitieuse aux pauvres, laquelle trespassa le 9 
Fevrier en l’an 1449.”’* There are others which seem not so much 
the tombs of men as the true monuments of chivalrous and Castilian 
honour. Such are those two sepulchres in the church of Santa Maria 
la Nova at Naples, which were generously raised by the Duke of Sessa, 
nephew of the Great Gonzalve and Governor of Naples, to two unfor- 
tunate warriors, who were his enemies, Lautrec and Pierre Navarre. 
There are some tombs, which so abruptly present the image of private 
domestic virtues amidst the solemn magnificence of sepulchral art, that 
it is hardly possible to view them without weeping. ‘They affect the 
stranger, too, because in a foreign and beauteous land, they remind him 
of the virtues of his own, or rather that in every country the amiable 
disposition is the same. Such is that tomb in the Campo Santo, near 
Bologna, of a young Genoese, of Patrician family, John Baptiste Se- 
bastian Cattaneo de Volta, whose innocent boyish form is represented 
above, and of the manners of whose holy youth a simple and touching 
account is given, describing how he sighed after heaven, and how for 
the first time he gave his parents sorrow when he died. Some tombs 
there were attesting the bonds of a mysterious friendship, such as that 
in the monastery of Medianum, which commemorated two brethren, 
John and Benign, both disciples of St. Hydulph, both born on the same 
day, and who were never separated from each other from childhood ; 
having been educated together, trained in the same studies, clad in the 
monastic cowl on the same day ; having lived together, fallen sick to- 
gether on the same day, died and received into Heaven on the same, 
and then their bodies buried in one tomb.t There were tombs which 
seemed erected for the peculiar delight of poets. Such were those in 
the church of St. Francis at Ferrara. ‘To commemorate heroes, sung 
by Ariosto, there were others, as if to proclaim, without vanity, the 
force of ancestral virtue, such as that in the church of Ecouen to the 
family of Chardon, on which one reads— 


“ Chardonee gentis cernis commune sepulcrum, 
Conspicuos clero, Marte, togaque viros.” 


There are tombs on which the inscription seems to combine the playful 
irony of Socrates, during his last moments, described so sublimely in 
the Phedo, with the serene majesty of the Gospel. Such is that sepul- 
chre in the cathedral of Ravenna, on which these words are inscribed— 
«Hic non jacet Donatus Capra. S. Raven. Ecclesie canonicus. Illud 
tantum hic jecit quod jacere potuisset in hoe monumento: mortalia 
deposuit qui totum virtute se voluit immortalem. Medicus fuit sed alios 
curavit non se ipsum. Suum esse nihil censuit preter animum. Et 
hoc nunquam egrotavit. Sal, MDCIIL. recessit.”’ At least, the style 
of this inscription presents a great contrast to the first line on a neigh- 
bouring, but far more illustrious sepulchre— 


‘* Hic Claudor Danthes Patris extorris ab oris.’ 


But it was not merely in the style of the inscriptions that the interest 
widens. ghia. subtest, ib ea Lhe Pet ee a 


* Taillepied, Antiquitez de Rouen. zr 
{ Chronic. Senoniensis, lib. ii. c. xi. apud Dacher. tom. m. 


AGES OF FAITH. 317 


of the ancient Catholic sepulchres consisted. The designs, the em- 
blems, the images, were all strongly characteristic of the ages of faith. 
Undoubtedly, pomp and magnificence belonged to the sepulchres of the 
great. ‘Henry VII. in Westminster dwelleth,” as Lord Bacon says, 
‘*more richly dead in the monument of his tomb than he did alive in 
Richmond, or any of his palaces.’ King Henry III. caused a coffin to 
be made of pure gold and precious stones for the holy relics of Edward 
the Confessor, and so artificially was it carved by the most cunning 
goldsmiths, that, although the matter was of inestimable value, ‘¢ yet the 
workmanship excelled it,’? as Matthew Paris saith. When Henry V. 
died, his queen, Catherine, caused a royal figure to be placed upon his 
tomb, covered all over with silver plate gilded, the head of which was 
of massive silver; so that, at ‘the reformation,’’ when the « battering 
hammers of destruction,” as Master Speed saith, «did sound in every 
chureh,”’ it was broken and carried off as a prize, and only a headless 
monument left. ‘The funeral pomp and the solemn monuments, adorn- 
ed with images and precious stones ought not,” says Savedra, ‘ to pass 
for signs of vanity in princes, but rather as evidence of a generous piety, 
which marks the last bounds of ‘human greatness, and shows, in the 
magnificence with which it honours their ashes, the respect which is 
due to majesty, for tombs are a mute history of the duties, and the end 
of man.’’* Neither ought this care of monuments, or attention to the 
preservation of particular bodies, to be regarded as arguing in the men 
of past times, any inconsistency in their firm belief respecting the gen- 
eral resurrection of the flesh. The moderns would have had nothing 
to teach them. «The dead,”’ says Louis of Blois, «* moulder into ashes, 
or are devoured by dogs; but all the particles that are dispersed are 
whole to God, for they are in those elements of the world whence they 
first came out when we were made: we see them not, but God knows 
whence he can bring them forth again, since, before we were, he knew 
how to produce us.”+ The emblems upon tombs, and the whole devel- 
opment of sepulchral architecture in the middle ages, indicated a mind 
essentially Christian ; and the departure from this style, in the deplora- 
ble times which followed, was loudly lamented by all who retained any 
reverence for antiquity. ‘If any one,’’ says Weever, «shall seriously 
survey the tombes erected in these our dayes, and examine the particu- 
lars of the personages wrought upon their tombes, he may easily dis- 
cerne the vanity of our mindes, vailed under our fantasticke habiis and 
attires, which, in time to come, will be rather provocations to vice than 
incitations to virtue; and so the Temple of God shall become a schoole- 
house of the monstrous habits and attires of our present age ; and which 
is worse, they garnish their tombes now adayes with the pictures of 
naked men and women, and bring into the Church the memories of the 
heathen gods and goddesses.’’+ 

Upon the sepulchres of the middle ages, the Passion, or Resurrection 
of our Lord, were the most ordinary representations. Kings and nobles 
of illustrious houses sought no separation from ecclesiastics in the orna- 
ments to be placed upon their graves. The magnificent tomb of Louis 


aS a Ae ee a a ol ka 


* Christian Prince, ii, 588, + Tractat. in Ps. lxii, 
} A Discourse of Funeral Monuments, chap. iii. 7 
2B2 


318 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


XII. and Anne of Bretagne, which was executed by Paul-Ponce, was 
surrounded with statues of the twelve Apostles. ‘The tomb of O Piers 
Shoonks, lord of an ancient decayed house, well moated near Burnt 
Pelham, who died twenty years after the conquest, which is in the 
church of Pelham Furnix, contains his figure, carved in stone, and about 
it are represented an eagle, alion, a bull, and an angel, to denote the 
four evangelists. Upon the wall of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London, 
was the image of Jesus, as also the figure of a lady kneeling before it, 
with this inscription, ‘‘Here, before the image of Jesu, lieth the wor- 
shipfull and right noble Ladie Margaret, Countesse of Shrewsbury, late 
wife of the true and victorious knight, John Talbot, Earle of Shrews- 
bury, which Countess passed from this world the fourteenth day of 
June, in the year of our Lord 1468; on whose soule Jesu have mercy. 
Amen.” 

Who has not experienced a mysterious influence on regarding the 
sepulchres of the middle ages, which remain in our ancient churches, 
where saints have left those weeds that in the last great day will shine 
so bright, on which kings and heroes, mitred monks, and blessed ere- 
mites, are represented in such revering forms of devotion that one 
almost expects to see tears start from them! These are all the works 
of men, who ever thought, as they carved the stone, that they were 
gaining heaven. Ah! how do these images of the dead seem to admon- 
ish the living! ‘These hands, with palms so fervently joined, these 
arms, so meekly crossed upon the breast, that face, so full of sweet mel- 
ancholy, that whole composure of the limbs, so humble, so devout, so 
full of reverence! How does not all this seem to admonish us, coming 
suddenly as we often do upon them, with obdurate hearts and minds 
distracted, and a body abandoned to a proud disdainful demeanour, the 
consequence of a long intercourse with the modern society which re- 
quires it as a passport to favour. How are we struck with awe, and 
how does the memory of holy things irresistibly return at the spectacle: 
the dead seem to reprove us from their sepulchres, and the stones them- 
selves to have acquired an expression which can pierce through the very 
deepest intricacy of our hearts. If it were only on these grounds, me- 
thinks what St. Gregory of Tours relates would not seem incredible : 
that in the church of Vodollacenum, on the river Garonne, where two 
holy priests were buried, one near the south and the other near the 
north wall, while the clergy were singing the office, it was thought that 
the voices of these saints were heard to join in the choir with wonder- 
ful sweetness.* These monuments were often designed and even exe- 
cuted by holy priests and religious men. ‘he monk who wrote the 
chronicle of Sens published by Dacherius says, after relating the death 
of Anthony, Abbot of his monastery, ‘* he was buried in a stone tomb, 
upon which afterwards I carved with my own hands an image of the ab- 
bot, as if reposing and holding his pastoral staff in his hand.”'t If Cice- 
ro thought it worthy of mention in his Tusculan disputations, that he 
had discovered under a covering of thorns and weeds, the antique sepul- 
chre of Archimedes, bearing a sphere and a cylinder carved upon it, 


RT ey VME NN Se 9A Aon nT NEGA gy AOE | CR te EN Be SER See neo cn eg 


* De gloria Confessorum, cap. 47. i! 
+ Chronic. Sinoniensis, lib. ii. cap. 21. Spicileg. tom. i. 


AGES OF FAITH. 319 


which was unknown to the Syracusans themselves, what Catholic need 
fear to describe his impressions, when in a land of darkness and unbe- 
lief, he has unexpectedly found upon the earth-level tomb within some 
ancient desecrated temple, the sculptured form of a tonsured priest clad 
in holy vestments, and holding in his hands the chalice and the paten ! 
Unknown and unintelligible to the descendants of the men who once 
were so familiar with holy rites, that poor stone seems in his eyes like 
an altar which it would be sacrilege to touch, excepting with the devout 
and solemn kiss of revering lips. Ah, if those who lie within these 
sepulchres were seen, what would be thought even by the simple rustics 
of the pompous and scornful men who now tread upon them, *“ ne’er 
mindful to ruminate the bed beneath their feet !”’ 

St. Gregory of ‘Tours, speaking of a place where the bodies of a vast 
number of the faithful were interred, after observing, ‘ that although some 
who lay buried there had been blessed martyrs, yet they had no parti- 
cular commemoration,’ concludes with a remark which must be often 
suggested to those who wander among the time-worn sepulchres of the 
ages of faith. ‘*Sunt enim ibi ut diximus,”’ saith he, “ illustrium meri- 
torum viri, quorum nomina, ignota incolis, scripta tamen ut credimus, 
retinentur in celis.’’** It was not alone within churches that the monu- 
ments of the dead assumed that solemn form. There were holy fields in 
the neighbourhood of cities and within the walls of monasteries, which 
were all thick spread with sepulchres, like that place mentioned in the 
history of Charlemagne, and alluded to by Dante, «‘ where Rhone stag- 
nates on the plains of Arles.”’t Archbishop Ubaldo Lanfranci, who 
accompanied Richard Cceur-de-Lion to the holy land, on his return 
in the year 1200, brought back with him to Pisa a large quantity of 
earth from Mount Calvary, and deposited it on the spot round which 
the cloisters of that celebrated Campo Santo were erected. On the 
great plains south of Paris, there was a place of burial from the time of 
the Pagans. An ancient oratory stood there dedicated under the invoca- 
tion of St. Michael, for in former times there was always a St. Michael’s 
chapel within or near great burying grounds.|| An image of the holy 
Archangel, weighing the souls in his balance, remained till the revolu- 
tion, on the highest point over this plain, which was the pinnacle of the 
church of Notre Dame-des-Champs.§ The turret of the Holy Innocents 
at Paris, like that which Dom Mabillon remarked at Bonneval in the 
diocese of Chartres, and that of the cemetery of Sarlat, were probably 
to contain lights to guide persons who came to the church at matins. 
Peter the Venerable speaks of a tower built in the midst of the ceme- 
tery of the Abbey of Cherlieu, in the diocese of Macon, on the top of 
which a lamp used to be lighted every night, through respect for the 
holy place in which the faithful reposed ;** and in the cemetery of Cluny 
he mentions, that there was a stone pedestal in the centre on which there 
was a lamp which was always burning during the night, through rever- 
ence of the faithful who there rested.tt ‘The cemetery of the Carthu- 
sian monastery of Calci near Pisa, is a most impressive and yet smiling 


* De gloria Confessorum, cap. 42. + Turpin, cap. 28 and 30. t Hell, ix. 
| Lebeuf, Hist. du diocése de Paris, tom. ili. 230. § Id. tom. i. chap. 6. 
** Id. tom. i. chap. 2. tt De Miraculis, lib. ii. 27, 


320 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


spot. It forms a lovely garden in the midst of the cloister; a fountain 
of marble and bronze stands in the centre, and the Apennines clothed 
with olives rise on all sides in beautiful undulations above the white 
Arcades. On the right are buried the priests, in the centre are the lay- 
brethren, and on the left those who minister. Such is the plan adopted 
in all monasteries of that order, as may be seen at Florence, Pavia, Fer- 
rara, and Bologna. 

In conclusion, though it is painful to be obliged to introduce such re- 
collections, we must remark that the ancient monuments of the Christ- 
ian dead have in these latter ages been the object of both religious and 
political hatred, so that in England and France we have only some scan- 
ty vestiges remaining of the sepulchral magnificence of the ages of faith. 

Weever was led to compile his great work on ancient funeral monu- 
ments from observing how barbarously the sepulchres and epitaphs of 
the illustrious dead in England had been broken down and effaced, the 
brazen inscriptions torn away for lucre sake, and their beauty destroyed 
through ‘the malignitie of wicked people, and,” as he says, ‘ our English 
profane tenacitie. Nothing,’’ he adds, * will be shortly left to continue 
the memory of the deceased to posterity; pilfery and*the opinion some 
have, that tombs and their epitaphs taste somewhat of popery, having . 
already most sacrilegiously stolen, erased, and taken away, almost all 
the inscriptions and epitaphs inlaid or engraven upon sepulchres, and 
most shamefully defaced the glorious rich tombs and goodly monuments 
of our most worthy ancestors,” and he expresses a wish that some order 
might be taken for the preservation of the few yet remaining, for to his 
own knowledge, by the observation he had made in many churches, 
‘the monuments of the dead were daily thus abused.’ He says, ‘that 
the foulest and most inhuman action of these times was the violation of 
funeral monuments. Marbles which covered the dead were dug up and 
put to other uses; tombs hacked and hewn in pieces; inscriptions or 
epitaphs, especially if they began with an ‘‘orate pro anima,’’ or con- 
cluded with ‘* cujus anime propitietur deus,”’ for greediness of the brass, 
or for that they were thought to be antichristian, pulled out from the 
sepulchres, and purloined, dead carcases for gain of their stone or lead- 
en coffins, cast out of their graves, notwithstanding this request engraven 
upon them, ‘ propter misericordiam Jesu requiescant in pace.’? ‘These 
commissioned grave-rakers, these gold-finders who make such deep 
search into the bottom of ancient sepulchres, pursued their barbarous 
rage against the dead, though in the second and fourteenth years of the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth, their savage cruelty was discountenanced by 
a royal proclamation. He mentions, ‘that in Saint Leonard’s church, 
Shoreditch, the ancient epitaphs were all taken away for covetousnesse 
of the brasse, by one Doctor Hanmer, vicar of this church, which he 
converted into coin, and presently after went over into Ireland. Even 
where tombs had not been purposely broken and destroyed, they were 
suffered to grow waste with devouring time, or to be hidden under the 
seats or pews then erected, as was the case,”’ he says, ‘¢in our Lady’s 
chapel at the Abbey of St. Alban’s, which was filled with the dead 
bodies of the nobilitié, slain in the great battle near that town, whose 
trophies were now in this barbarous manner defaced. Many monu- 
ments of the dead,’’ he says, ‘‘in churches in and about this city of 


AGES OF FAITH. 32] 


London, as also in some places of the country, are covered with seats 
or pews, made high and easie for the parishioners to sit or sleepe in; a 
fashion,’’ he adds, and his testimony is remarkable, «‘of no long con- 
tinuance, and worthy of reformation.’’* With respect to the sacri- 
legious devastation of tombs in consequence of political fury, it is to 
France and the countries which unhappily fell under its impious dom- 
ination, that we should rather look, though the religious reformers had 
been at work there also, for Francis Baldwin a French lawyer, in the 
time of Calvin, speaks of men then making war even upon the dead, 
the statues, sepulchres, the very bones and bodies of martyrs and 
princes, escaping not their barbarous hands.t Every one has heard how 
the French, in the first stage of their revolution, made war upon the 
dead and violated their quiet tombs, not being able to endure that mute 
history which, as Savedra says, ‘they afforded of the duties and the 
end of man; ‘‘but many are ignorant of the stupid and barbarous, and if 
possible, still more infatuated measure which they adopted every where, 
when they were phrenzied “to that worst pitch of all which wears a 
reasoning show,” of transporting sepulchres from their original site, to 
form a museum of art in their capital, or within some central spot within 
the cities of which they had taken possession. 

A greater proof of insensibility, of an utter want of all the feelings of 
taste and genius, to say nothing of religion, could scarcely be found in 
the history of nations. For what interest could be inspired by these 
tombs when deposited along with books and machinery in modern gal- 
leries of art, and removed from all the associations which had made them 
venerable? ‘The sepulchre in which Abailard and Heloisa were buried, 
was indeed an object of interest when it was seen in the monastery of 
Paraclet, near Nogent-Sur-seine in Champagne, where Peter the Ven- 
erable had himself erected it; but what was it when placed in a museum 
in the street of the Augustins at Paris? 

The tombs of the knights slain at the battle of Poitiers, such as those 
of the Duke of Athens, of John de Bourbon, of the two brothers, Cham- 
bely de Chatillon, and of other nobles who died for their country on 
that memorable day, could awaken a thousand recollections, and kindle 
an heroic flame, from the very circumstance of their being seen in the 
Franciscan convent in that city: but when removed to a distant capital, 
what were they but so many old stones, mere specimens of ancient 
sculpture? Poets might well direct their steps to the great Benedictine 
Abbey at Ferrara, in order to visit the sepulchre of Ariosto; but who 
could feel any interest in regarding it when it had been removed by 
those insane Frenchmen to the public library, in order, as they said, that 
it might be seen along with the finest editions of his poems! Yet this is 
done by the nation which has taken upon itself to designate the middle 
ages as a blank in history, an epoch when men were deprived of all 
intelligence and genius! It is, however, like striking the slain, to expose 
the weakness of these poor sophists; let us leave them to babble, and 
only remark within ourselves how wise were the ages of faith in respect 
even of all material arrangements, and how much more favourable they 
were, not only to poets, but to the common feelings of the human heart, 
cl ae cack hi ae ae ET 


* Funeral Mem. p. 701. + Respons. ult. ad Jo. Calvin. 
Vou. Il.—41 


322 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


It was then that a natural order was followed, combining variety of 
measures in accordance with the variety of circumstances in nature. A 
poet, a learned philosopher, or a renowned hero, was buried in the 
church of his parish, in the monastery where he had died, or in his 
ancestral tomb. ° 

In the eighth century, we find that the desire of being buried in one’s 
paternal sepulchre led to the decrees of synods; * although St. Augustin 
had shown, that the divine menace to a prophet, that he should not be 
buried in the sepulchre of his fathers,t was merely intended to excite a 
human affection, and was no further a punishment than in afflicting the 
living.t In like manner the works of a painter were deposited in the 
church for which he had designed them, to which, perhaps, like Rubens, 
he had presented them, as a perpetual memorial of his having within their 
wails received baptism, the portal to his faith. ‘Thus every monument 
was seen in the place for which the master-mind of its author had 
designed it, and in connection with the circumstances which often con- 
stituted its chief interest. In this men followed wise and cunning 
Nature, who scatters her various productions over the whole world, and 
is never found to collect them all in one place, without regard to climate 
or locality, or to the harmonious accordance to surrounding tones and 
objects. Such was the system of the middle ages, when an idea was 
the origin and determining principle of every material monument, im- 
parting to it life and reason. But for this the wisdom of the moderns 
has substituted a mere fictitious and nominal system, according to which, 
monuments are erected, and institutions founded at random, or from 
mere material motives, while, as it were, the soul is left to follow or 
not, as accident may determine. In order to have uniformity, and clas- 
sification, and centralization in inanimate things, which, by their very 
nature, should be various and dispersed, these sophists, who introduce 
anarchy and division into spiritual things, hasten to disinter the dead, 
and to collect their mouldering ashes into common cemeteries, in the 
same manner as they would collect all the paintings and statues of every 
city in one gallery in Paris; thus presenting us, in one spot, with death 
in mass, and depriving all other places of the sanctity with which, when 
seen in detail, it had formerly invested them. No more tender connec- 
tion can be traced between the study and the tomb, between genius and 
the country which it had adorned, between virtue and the home and 
friends to which it was endeared! but all is confounded and amassed 
together in one overwhelming crowd, to which an unnatural, unmean- 
ing, and even burdensome uniformity, is imparted. ‘True, these vast 
cemeteries, within the ancient enclosures of suppressed monasteries, may 
have an imposing aspect, from the beauty of the ancient site; and at all 
events, they supply an object to the idle traveller, who without it, might 
be at a loss which way to direct his steps; but assuredly one may regret 
the time when these sepulchres were found standing apart over the very 
graves which had originally received their tenants, when the knight lay 
by the side of the palmer, and the monarch by the counsellor whom he 
had loved; when one could trace signs of tender connection even among 
the dead, and when graves and tombs entered into the system of an har- 


* Dacherius Spicileg. tom. ix. + 3 Reg. 13. 21. t De Cura pro Mortuis. 


AGES OF FAITH. 323 


monious variety. Such discipline, one may remark, was more favour- 
able to the associations of the learned, to the illustration of history, to 
the interests of friendship, to the desire of mourners, and to one of the 
deepest, and perhaps most amiable feelings, of our nature. 


CHAPTER X. 


Brier shall be the last act of what may be termed this fourth school, 
in our well-intended but imperfectly accomplished course. We have 
endeavoured to show, from ancient writings, what was the character of 
mourners during the ages which were most illuminated with the light 
of faith: and I am much deceived if enough has not been here advanced 
to prove that they were abundantly blessed ; that if they were not able to 
define evil with as much minuteness as the ancient philosophers, they 
were able to escape from it better. That their mourning was sanctified 
and angelic; that it was blessed in their calamities, in their profound 
studies of wisdom, in their loves, in their spiritual exercises, in their 
penance, in their sickness, and in their death. ‘They wept, it is true, 
before the Lord who made them. As the great Cardinal Bellarmin 
prescribes, they wept for sorrow, because they had provoked to anger the 
best of Parents: ‘‘they wept for joy, because the Lord who made them 
was mild and of great mercy: they wept for sorrow, because their 
benignant Creator, to whom the Church offers up prayers with weeping, 
loveth justice: they wept for joy, because He desireth not the death of 
sinners, but that they may be converted and that they may live.’’* 
They mourned after the example of the prophets, of the apostles and of 
the universal Church. They mourned with a Bernard and a Vincent, 
from a consideration of sin and its penalty. They mourned with a 
Francis and a Bonaventura, from a remembrance of the passion of 
Christ. They mourned with an Anthony and a Hermit Nicholas, 
from an anticipation or a retrospect of the persecutions of the Church 
by heretics—for the latter foresaw the Lutheran, as the former had 
wept from foreseeing the Arian heresy. They mourned with an Augus- 
tin and a Chrysostom, from a consideration of the miseries of the human 
race. ‘They mourned with a Thomas Aquinas and an Anselm, from 
the depth and penetration of a mind, to which were made known the 
hidden and unsearchable things of the wisdom of God. Finally, with a 
Bellarmin, they mourned, from a sense of the necessity of tears; for the 
sighs of the dove, the tears of the just—tears of sorrow and tears of love 
——are an earnest of the remission of sins, an imitation of the virtue of 
Christ, the nurse of compassion, of reformation of manners, and of char- 
ity. ‘They indicate a contempt for the world and a love for God. They 


ise memeeenemmtmer a corte ren nn re a ee ee 


* Bellarmin. de Gemitu Columbsz., lib. i. c. L. 


324 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


are fruitful in works of penitence and mercy during life, and a consola- 
tion which surpasseth thought at the hour of death. 

All this I have attempted to illustrate from the history of the ages of 
faith: but still, something more remains in reference to the conclusion 
of that benign and gracious sentence from the Mount, which proceeds 
to affirm that these mourners, seen to have been already blest from the 
operation of a general law, were, in addition, by an especial and super- 
natural grace, to be comforted. ‘* Beati qui lugent quia consolabuntur.”’ 
They that sowed in tears were to reap in joy: going they had wept, 
casting abroad their seeds; but coming, they were to return with exulta- 
tion, carrying their sheaves with them. In this life they had sorrow, 
because, as St. Augustin interprets the passage, they had lost, by their 
conversion to God, parents, brethren, and friends, and felt that persecu- 
tion, which all holy members of the Catholic Church will have to suffer 
in every age:* or they had sorrow, because, according to the commen- 
tary of St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose, they mourned 
for their own sins and for the sins of others. ‘They thus had sorrow ; 
a sorrow, indeed, most sweet: for, as St. Augustin says, ‘* Dulciores 
sunt lacryme orantium, quam gaudia Theatrorum.”’t And though men 
of this world, who know not the sighs of the dove, can scarcely be 
persuaded of this, nevertheless, as Bellarmin says, it is most true.t 
Still, in comparison of what awaiteth those that are to be of angels 
signed, they had sorrow ; but their Lord was again to see them, and 
their hearts were to rejoice, and their joy no one was to take from them. 
They were to be comforted. But who shall attempt to describe that 
comforting? Blessed be they that weep; and God himself shall wipe 
the tears from their eyes. ‘*'’Those must needs be comfortable tears,’ 
adds Father Diego de Stella, “‘ which the blessed hand of our Master 
doth wipe away !’’ Even in this brief and wretched life what comfort- 
ing was theirs! St. Augustin remarks, ‘*' That it would be tedious to 
enumerate the instances of divine being called by the same names as 
human things, although they are separated from each other by an incom- 
parable diversity.’’|| Man, when a citizen of the earthly republic, uses 
God’s words, and imparts to them his own infelicity. Thus, in the lan- 
guage which conveys heavenly truth to his understanding, to mourn is 
to be brought as near to God, the source of all happines, as the present 
condition of human life admits. In the language of the impious city, 
to mourn is to be wretched, to have every principle of joy annihilated 
within us,—that is, to be separated from him as far as possible. In the 
sense of faith, in the view of the city of God, mourning carries with it 
its own consolation; it is, in fact, only one component ray in the lus- 
trous beam of that light which imparteth unclouded felicity. ‘To mourn- 
ing belongs charity, and the peace of God, along with which nothing 
harsh or bitter can ever enter, but only sweetness, and such happy 
things as have affinity with the glorious end for which souls were first 
created. Religion, in her severest discipline, seeks to render no one 
sad. She imposes misery on no one; but, as St. Bernard says, ‘¢ Char- 
itas vult te tuum sentire dolorem, ut jam non habeas unde dolere: vult 


* Lib. de Serm. Dom. in Monte. + Tract. in Psalm cxxvii. ue i 
{ De Gemitu Columb. i. 3. | De Diversis Quest. ad Simplician. lib. 1. 


\ 


AGES OF FAITH. 325 


te tuam scire miseriam, ut incipias miser non esse.’’* ‘The mourning 
which she inculcates stands opposed, therefore, not to joy and pleasure, 
as Johnson and other modern writers would insinuate, but to the sadness 
of the world and of death, to that unjust delight which, as the poet of 
old could discern, was necessarily followed by a bitter end— 
70 68 tap Suxayv 
yhuxd muxpotaTa mevee censured. 

But, perhaps, some one will be inclined to suggest a doubt here; and 
will refer, in justification of his incredulity, to what has occurred during 
many ages in lands where heresy has been allowed to conquer, and to 
impart, in show, at least, all the treasures of the earth to such as fell 
down to worship it. Methinks I see his mind, by thought on thought 
arising, sore perplexed, and with vehement desire, seeking solution of 
the maze! ‘True, there are cases, and history, both ancient and modern, 
furnishes numerous examples of it, when every one, at the bottom of 
his soul, is forced to admit, that the cause of the conqueror has pleased 
the Providence which rules the world, that of the conquered, good men. 
This history, undoubtedly involves one of them; but if these persons 
diligently attend, they will understand that, while full consolation was 
imparted to just mourners, even in the present life, to the unjust who 
seemed to have no need of consolation, the punishment of men was 
wanting, not that of God. Men defended a tyrant, and pursued and con- 
summated what he had begun in a most detestable action ; men praised a 
most base and pernicious sophistry ; men pronounced a sentence of ac- 
quittal; men felt not in themselves the injury of their crime; men gave to 
these destroyers palaces and domains. I admit that all benefits from 
men were their’s, and greater could not be demanded; but from God— 
Almighty God !—what greater punishment could fall upon them than that 
fury and madness? ‘+ Unless,” as Cicero says, ‘‘perchance, in trage- 
dies, you think that those whom you behold, covered with wounds, and 
consumed with grief of body, are objects of greater wrath than those 
who are introduced raving and insane ; but (as the Roman orator contin- 
ues) the complaints and groans of Philoctetes are not so miserable as 
that exultation of Athamas, and those horrid dreams of matricide.’’ 
These sophits, in rejecting the sweet and salutary yoke of authority, 
when they overthrew the houses of the religious; when they drove the 
best men, by sanguinary laws, from the administration of the state; 
when they established the principle of private judgment, that is, univer- 
sal disorder; when they overthrew holy churches, to build out of them 
palaces for themselves; when they profaned and abolished sacred rites ; 
when they did not perceive that they were impious and insane; then did 
they suffer those punishments which alone, in many instances, in this 
present state of existence, are constituted, by the God of heaven, for the 
wickedness of men: for, indeed, the infirmity of our body is subject of 
itself to many sufferings, it is destroyed often by the’ slightest cause: 
the peace and joy of the soul can triumph over its pains; but the darts 
of God are plunged into the minds of the impious. Without doubt, 
some nations, in their collective capacity, have exhibited all the effects 
which might be expected a priori to follow from a judicial sentence 


* Epist, 2. + Pindar, Isth. Od. vii. 


2C 


326 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


registered against them in heaven; and that, too, while the citizens of 
the earthly republic were loud in their praises, admiring and esteeming 
them eminently glorious. ‘True, indeed, great caution is necessary in 
coming even to any private conclusions with respect to the judgment of 
God, to which so many wise and holy men, like Cardinal Allen and his 
contemporary Bishop Watson, have wished that the punishment of 
states were wholly left; nor need any one be told that, according to 
ecclesiastical science, a general retention of sins can affect the title of 
no man formally; but leaving distinctions to divines, and, waving the 
theological argument altogether, there are historical facts crowding upon 
the memory, which may well incline thoughtful men to suspect secret- 
ly, that a great deal more may frequently be true than what the school 
requires them to believe, or even than what the caution of the school 
would permit them to announce. Wars, famine, and pestilence, are 
not the only scourges of God; there are moral invasions, which pro- 
claim, with even greater certainty, the visitation of his anger: pride, 
avarice, and a mind wholly given up to the worship of matter, constant 
external prosperity, leading to hardness of heart, and misery of the 
poor: the being puffed up, like the Corinthians, having no more sor- 
row, no mourning of the dove, but in its place the gloom and sullen 
groans of Babylon; the want of spiritual resources, the want or the 
corruption of the word of God, and the confusion of Babel succeeding 
to unity of religion ; the rich being engulfed in stupid sensuality, and in- 
volved in an ignorance which appears to some invincible ; the co-operation 
of all things to obscure the light of Christ, and to make men aliens in 
spirit from his church ;—these, and other effects following, from the re- 
moval of the candlestick, are still more evidently the inflictions of Divine 
justice ; so that, whoever has beheld a nation, with manners thus opposite 
to the supernatural discipline of the city of God,—a nation, thus, to use 
prophetic language, adoring the beast and its image, receiving its inscrip- 
tion on the forehead and on the hand, may certainly be warranted in con- 
cluding, that he has seen a chastised people, not indeed without numerous 
particular exemptions, for the general schemes of Divine beneficence are 
never, in any place, wholly interrupted: but yet in its collective character, 
and as far as suits the purpose of furnishing a perpetual lesson to mankind, 
a people already punished, already under the fearful scourge of Almighty 
Providence, whether the cause be to human ken fathomable or not. 
But in the judgment of those who observe history with the eyes of faith 
this is the order of grace, and as clearly to be understood as that of na- 
ture. Peter and Paul, they say, live yet to mark our doings. Many a 
time ere now the sons have, for the sire’s transgressions, wailed: and 
that living justice, upon the primal seat, vested with mysterious power, 
when it denounces pride no longer tolerable, binds it not in vain. ‘The 
very heathen philosopher could discern what, in the secrets of Divine 
judgment, would be most terrible for man. ‘It was,” says Maximus 
of Tyre, ‘from transgressing the eternal law that Alcibiades was unfor- 
tunate: not when he was summoned from Sicily by the Athenians, nor 
when he fled beyond Attica; these were small calamities, for Alcibiades 
in exile was greater than those who remained at home ; he was honoured 
by the Lacedemonians; he fortified Deceleia; he became the friend of 
Tissaphernes, and the general of Sparta: but the punishment of Alcibi- 


AGES OF FAITH. 327 


ades began long before; it was ordained by an older law, and by older 
judges. When he left the Lyceum, was condemned by Socrates, and 
proscribed by philosophy :—then it was that Alcibiades was banished 
and undone.’ And now, what remains but to express a fervent hope, 
that some of the many mourners of earth may be induced, by reflections 
such as these, drawn from the testimonies of past ages, to approach near- 
er than they have ever hitherto done to contemplate their history. For 
there is but one way to escape evil, which is by flying to the same cita- 
del in which the ancient Christians stood, and thence taking up the same 
arms as were used by them; but, from it, alas! at how great a distance 
are the men of our age! “O quam longe recessimus ab apostolica dis- 
ciplina,”’ cried Bellarmin, «et quant rara nune est, que olim frequentis- 
sima erat, gratia lacrymarum.’’* Men of sorrows, who mourn with an 
unavailing, an unblessed grief, you may have heard how the Sage of 
Greece exhorted his anxious disciples to search, not only into the wis- 
dom of their own country, but also into that of the barbarous nations, 
whose opinions and customs they should, he said, thoroughly investi- 
gate, in search of some epode, to deliver them from the fear of death, 
sparing neither riches nor labour, as there is nothing for which they 
could more wisely expend both.t In some respects, you stand in the 
same position as these disciples: in the midst of supposed superior civ- 
lization, and in spite of your profession, still conscious of being unpos- 
sessed of a practical remedy against that dread of death from which it is 
clear not all the advance of science, nor all the refinements of your phi- 
losophic and liberal views of religion can deliver you at your last hours. 
Be not then ashamed to imitate the humility prescribed to them, and 
take that salutary hint from old philosophy, and apply it to the present 
circumstances, and to your own condition. You call the ages of faith 
dark ages in the world’s history; and you suppose that the generation 
of men which succeeded, from the fall of the Roman empire till the six- 
teenth century, were a race of barbarians, at least in comparison with 
those which belong to the ancient and modern civilization, Well, be it 
so. Let us, for a moment, grant all that you demand; let us call them 
dark and barbarous ages. Literature, you say, will have it so; but re- 
member that philosophy may take very little heed of the judgment of 
literature, At all events, it is never scared by a reproachful epithet; 
and you must admit, with Plato, that it matters not the least, whether 
you have recourse to Greeks or barbarians, provided you can but dis- 
cover somewhere that epode, that efficacious remedy, to enable you to 
render blest your sorrows, your sickness, and your death. 

At present, in the midst of all these modern lights, of all this boasted 
civilization, so contrary to the simplicity which characterizes the city 
of God, you mourn; you fear sickness; and, above all, you shrink in 
terror from the thought of death; at least, you cannot pretend that men 
in these days die with as much tranquillity, and with as bright and stead- 
fast a hope as the men whose dissolution we have been witnessing in 
the ages which you designate as those of monastic darkness. You 
mourn, and your mourning is avowedly without hope, without a bless- 
ing. Indeed, your own guides affirm that, for sorrow, there is no rem- 


1, 4, CRN a ae oa eee ee Oe! Nae ar MD OR ee) 


* De Gemitu Columba, lib. i. 9. + Plato Phedo, 78. 


328 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


edy provided by nature; it is often occasioned, by accidents irreparable, 
and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence: it 
requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be 
repealed, that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. 
There is nothing in the modern civilization which can make it other- 
wise. Well, then, will it not be reasonable to try what may be found 
among the barbarians? ‘*O, wearied spirits! come, and hold discourse 
with us, and be by none else restrained.”? ‘‘You have no comfort in 
your calamity,’’ as the poet testifies, ‘but that of tears, and the cries 
of lamentation, and the Muse which has sorrow. This is all the sweet- 
ness which that muse can promise to you.”’* <‘O, is it not just to call 
you,”’ as the poet styled men of old, ‘unwise and vain, who have in- 
vented hymns for days of festal joy, for banqueting and triumph, the 
delightful sounds to sweeten prosperous life, but who have never discov- 
ered, by the muse and harmonious ode, how to soothe the bitter sorrows 
of mortals, when deaths and dreadful evils come to visit houses? then 
there would have been some advantage from song to wretched men; but 
in times of joyful feasting, what need of sounds to increase a pleasure 
which is already at its full— 

OT VyLoUs 52 Bpotay ovders Awztas 

etpevo movoy xOL mormvxopdors 

ders mower, && Gv Savaror, 

Sewvas te TVYAL oParAOVOL Somovs.T 

Ah! if you would but condescend to visit the humble and meek race, 

and investigate their ways, lifting up your eyes, like men in those an- 
tique days, to the mountains whence help might come to you,{ you 
would, like them, find consolation according to the multitude of the 
sorrows which oppress your heart. Secundum multitudinem dolorum 
meorum in corde meo, consolationes tue letificaverunt animam meam.| 
Then you would say, like them, ‘‘ Gladden the soul of thy servant, my 
Saviour and Creator; gladden it, because I have raised it to thee. It 
was on the earth, and on the earth it was full of bitterness ; lest it should 
become corrupted through bitterness, lest it should lose all the sweetness 
of thy grace, I have raised it to thee, who alone art joy. ‘The world is 
full of bitterness. Rightly are men admonished that they should raise 
their hearts to thee. Let them hear and obey. Let them raise to heaven 
what is wretched upon earth.’’§ St. Augustin has attempted to enum- 
erate the principal sources of pain and sorrow to men, and mournful 
indeed is the view which he reveals of thislife.** Yet, then, with this 
confirmed, even by your own experience, ‘ You would feel,”’ as St. Chry- 
sostom says, ‘that it was a greater gift to suffer than to raise the dead ; 
for, by the gift of miracles, God would render thee a debtor to himself; 
whereas, when he sendeth thee sufferings, he maketh himself debtor to 
thee; he has pledged himself that you shall be comforted.” Then, 
however afflicted, your peace of mind would not be lost: ‘* But,” as St. 
Bernard says, “ your desolation would be sweet. Desolatur suaviter.”” 
Joy would well from grief, as in that beauteous gulf of Spezzia, where 
one sees the sweet water rise up out of the salt and bitter sea. ‘It is 


wel CLE CE I PLT TM, I a NN a ee 


* Eurip. Troades, 608. + Eurip. Medea. 193, —{ Ps. cxx. 1. | Ps. xciil. 19. 
§ Ludovic. Blosii Tractat. in Ps, lxxxv. ** De Civitate Dei, lib. xxil. 22. 


AGES OF FAITH. 329 


only the beginning of misfortune,” as the author of the Martyrs says, 
‘‘ which could for an instant alarm you.’’ In the full height of adver- 
sity, you will find, in separating yourself from the earth, tranquil and 
serene regions; as when one ascends the bank of a furious torrent, one 
is horror struck at the entrance of the valley, and with the. roar of the 
waves ; but in proportion as one ascends the mountain, the falls dimin- 
ish, the noise dies away, and the course of the traveller comes to an end 
in regions of silence near the sky, in sweet verdant spots, enamelled 
with a thousand new flowers, far from all that can wound or contaminate 
pure and innocent creatures. Yes, the ineffable goodness of God would 
be felt even when he punishes, for it would be the effect of his correc- 
tion that you had discovered this source of surpassing joy. The hour 
when the solitary soul, widowed of its last hope, would expect nothing 
more from the earth, when friendship would fail, and weak man, who 
fears the contagion of misfortune, would leave you face to face with 
grief, when the future would have no longer any charms to make you 
wish for the morrow ; then, if you were one of those humble and blessed 
mourners, the voice of God would be heard in the silence of your heart, 
that language which can be mixed with no other, and which consoles 
and beatifies those who cannot be otherwise comforted.* At the sweet 
sounds of comfort you would turn from earth, and in saintly contempla- 
tion behold a love which must be left in silence here; « Nor through 
distrust,’’ as Dante saith, «‘of words only, but that to such bliss the mind 
remounts not without aid.”’t Then, too, God would give such grace 
that, without boasting, you might use whatever language had been framed 
by sages to express how little they feared calamity: happy were your 
death, your ending blest, your torments easy, full of sweet delight. Af- 
ter having been in the dungeon in the midst of sufferings, like another 
chosen vessel, you would participate in his raptures into the third 
heaven; after having sunk under the weight of chains with Peter, you 
would be delivered and comforted by an angel. Do you not hear what 
the holy Church sings? Francis, Francis the mourner, the despised, 
the persecuted ; Francis, poor and humble, enters rich into Heaven, and 
is honoured with celestial hymns. Well, then, thither too would you 
follow to receive the last abundant consolation, for 
“There are the treasures tasted, that with tears 
Were in the Babylonian exile won.”+ 

Oh, that Highest God would deal thus with these poor mortals for 
whom Christ wept, and bled, and died, with these deceived but still 
generous creatures, once made in God’s own image, in the freshness of 
their being so gifted virtually, that all better habits would wondrously 
have thrived, and possessed of faculties to be again his glorious champ- 
ions, defenders of his holy city, the joy of mystic Sion. O that he would 
behold them in their state calamitous, betrayed by apostates, dispossessed 
of strength, and turn their labours, for he ever can, to peaceful end. 
Then, in the blest kingdoms, meek of joy and love, all the saints in sol- 
emn troops would entertain them. Angels, ever bright and fair, would 
sing ; and, singing in great glory, comfort them, and wipe the tears for 
ever from their eyes. 


a a ht a a ls gk ag SIME) 


* La Martine, Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses. { Parad. xviii. { Id. xxiii. - 


Vor. IT.—42 2c2 


330 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


THE FIFTH BOOK. 


CHAPTER I. 


At the fourth counsel of the mystic song a sudden lustre, like the 
golden beams which brighten up the horizon at the evening hour, illum- 
inated my heart. Methought a countless multitude of men, of every 
age, and order, and degree, passed before me. Emperors and princes 
were there, and mitred fathers, and whole hosts wrapped up in sable 
weeds; nor were wanting the ideal comrades of our youth, steel-clad 
knights, and gentle poets of the bower and hall; grave magistrates too 
followed amidst a throng of citizens and peasants, in which were some 
who toiled in trades laborious which seem base to the pride of mor- 
tals, and others who craved alms for sweet charity, and around each 
did shine an unimaginable light, encircling him as a luminary of eternal 
vision, which clearer than with any voice proclaimed his everlasting 
princedom. ‘These were all they whose wishes tended to justice; for 
they shouted forth ‘‘Blessed,’’ and ended with ‘1 thirst.””. O how 
after each pause the harmony sounds more and more strange to ears of 
flesh and blood. We know, indeed, that all spirits on this earth hunger 
and thirst, as all mourn. Who has not observed, while wandering on 
the shore of brief life with wretched men, the careful provision made to 
satisfy the thirst for riches, the thirst for singularity, the thirst for nov- 
elty, the thirst for change, the thirst for honours, the thirst for the first 
seats, and for hearing Rabbi, the thirst for knowledge, perhaps, so prais- 
ed by that Cheronean sage, who says, ‘that letters and philosophy 
should imprint in our soul a passion similar to thirst and hunger, which 
would evince its power if we were deprived of them ;”’ but unless when 
enjoying such visions from reverting to the traditions and monuments 
of ages of faith, where, O where is there any indication discernible 
among Adam’s children of attention to the thirst for justice ? 

‘¢ My soul thirsteth after thee,”’ said holy Israel’s king. ‘* Mark,” adds 
St. Augustin, ‘how he thirsted. There are who thirst, but not after 
God. Whoever feels the ardour of desire, that desire is the thirst of 
his soul, And see how many desires are in the hearts of men! One 
desires gold, another possessions, another cattle, another houses, ano- 
ther honours. See how many desires, and how few men there are who 
ever say, ‘my soul thirsteth after Thee,’ for men thirst after the world, 
and they know not that they are in the desert of Idumea, where their 
souls ought to thirst after God.’’* 

In submitting history to the investigations required here, there are 
many and various points to be kept in view. We should, in the first 
place, remark, how the need of a divine object for the wants of the soul 
was recognized, from which in a great measure followed the offices and 


* Tyactat. in Ps. Ixii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 331 


festivals of religion, which must, therefore, be surveyed in order. This 
research will demonstrate what a zeal for religion animated men in all 
classes of society. And thus far our attention will seem to have been 
confined to verify the existence of the thirst which is blessed: but from 
this point, its fulfilment will be our theme ; for I shall then proceed to 
show in how admirable a manner the religious sentiment was reduced to 
action, which will lead on to a particular investigation of the state of 
morality in the ages which we review: when I shall have illustrated 
this statement by the evidence of contemporaneous authorities it will be 
necessary through regard for the mistakes and errors of later times, to 
show on what principle that whole system of morality depended, and 
what was its peculiar tone. After which inquiry, I shall bring the sixth 
book to an end. 

All ages have been characterized by certain leading passions, which 
have impelled men to pursue some particular object of apparent good. 
Some, like the epoch which is distinguished by the rise of the new 
Opinions in the fifteenth century, have been ages of avarice, of the 
reign of gold, when men thirsted after riches as the supreme felicity for 
Which they were ready to make the sacrifice of their souls, pledging 
them to Satan, and of their bodies, literally offering them to the Jews. 
Others, like those we read about in times more remote, have been ages 
of what was vainly termed military glory ; others, like those associated 
on every tongue with names illustrious, ages of art and literature, be- 
cause though no error of philosophy and no temporary delusion of the 
multitude could totally suppress the cry of nature, yet during those in- 
tervals, the possession of gold, military glory, art, and literature, were 
held up to the admiration of men, who always assent to a resolute affir- 
mation, as being the proper object and the farthest end of their desires 
and activity. We judge thus of times prior to Christianity from what 
we find in the writings of their eminent men, and from what has been 
transmitted to us respecting their customs and institutions, and by using 
the same process of investigation in reference to the middle ages, we 
shall find reason to conclude, that during the long period which they 
comprise, the object recognized as being the legitimate end of all mortal 
desire, of all civil legislation, and of all individual exertion, was not 
gold, not military glory, not art or literature, but, Strange and wondrous 
as it may sound to many, the eternal happiness of the soul, or the fulfil- 
ment of justice in accomplishing the will of God. The conclusion 
would not be that these were ages of perfect justice or of social perfec- 
tion, which can only reign within the supernal city of God triumphant, 
Nay, where souls are imbruted in matter, the face of external things 
may often seem less disturbed than where men of desire with heavenly 
thirst inspired, are struggling to set them right; but that the ruling pas- 
sion which can be always discerned in the history of these times amidst 
the innumerable disorders to which as at all other periods of the orld 
men were subject, cannot be otherwise designated than as the thirst after 
justice; and if the proof be demanded, we find it in’ the institutions, 
legislation, and whole form of society which distinguished them, for 
which no parallel can be found in the annals of mankind, and which no 
ingenuity can trace to any other origin. The blessed mourning, from 
which we have so lately turned, seems to present itself to us again in 


332 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


this place ; for in the thirst after justice lies the secret of the inexhausti- 
ble tears and profound genius of the middle ages. Precious tears which 
flowed in limpid legends, in admirable poems, in sublime imagery. 
Yes, these complaints which they make of the course of things around 
them, from which modern writers attempt to deduce such calumnious in- 
ferences, prove only that they felt the eternity of that mystery which had 
its consummation on Calvary. They saw, as a living historian remarks, 
that Christ was still on the cross, and not likely soon to descend from it— 
that the passion continues and will continue. Behold these old statues 
in the cathedrals of the middle age! See how they implore with joined 
palms the long wished for and terrible moment when man for judgment 
is to wake from clay, wake for that great sentence of universal retribu- 
tion, which is to put an end to the ineffable sorrow which has so long 
oppressed them. The present race of men are accustomed to look with 
indifference at the great crimes of nations, referring them either to the 
blind decrees of inexorable fate, or only founding on them commercial 
speculations, with the hope of enriching their own coffers. France, 
encouraged by some secret source of meanness and profligacy in the ad- 
ministrators of a greater power, is thus permitted to run her career from 
Ancona to the ‘Tagus, unstigmatized by common voice, as if all sense 
of shame and honour were extinct in human breasts ; but the ery of the 
middle ages in view of the calamities and injustice of men, while wait- 
ing for the hour of Almighty vengeance, might remind us of those 
words from the summit of the mystic cross, ‘‘ Tristis usque ad mortem.” 

The sages of antiquity were not wholly insensible to the necessity of 
having in view, amidst the perturbations and vicissitudes of life, a divine 
instead of a human end. Well had the Athenian in Plato maintained 
xprvar 7d mév onovdarov onovdalew, 7 Sé uN ortovdaroy vj,* and Plato him- 
self continually shows the importance of having one supreme object, 
to which looking always, we may direct all our words and actions. He 
would have this question constantly addressed to his disciples," Sovua- 
ove, ov 88 1) roe oxomers; TU mor” Exeivd éore TO &y;T profound and searching 
words, at which even the children of light might sometimes tremble. 
Cicero in explaining why philosophy does not produce equal effects 
upon all minds, adduces the disposition of the youth with whom he 
converses, to feel unsatisfied with every thing human, as an evidence 
of the superior nobleness of his nature, and of its capabilities to profit by 
philosophy. ‘* Te natura excelsum quemdam videlicet, et altum, et hu- 
mana despicientem genuit.”t Thus we read of Schiller «* his mind was 
not of that sort for which rest is provided in this world.” Faith im- 
parted the privileges of genius, so as to make applicable to every man 
the mystic name of that founder of the religious metropolis of the Gauls, 
moSevyos, the man of desire in whose breast was extinguished the expec- 
tation and even the desire of happiness on earth. His could only be a 
life of wishes, of longing, of labour, and restlessness ; it must be made 
up all of sighs and tears, it must be all made of service, all made of fan- 
tasy, all made of hopes and fears, all adoration, duty, and observance, 
all humbleness, all patience, all purity, all trial. But while the thirst 
of the world appears in that real heart-rending sadness, which no imagi- 


* De Legibus, vii. + Id. lib. xii. + Tuscul. ii. 4. 


AGES OF FAITH. 333 


nation can ennoble, the affliction of soul arising from the thirst for jus- 
tice, is always sublime in its expression, and full of ideal grandeur, as 
in the piercing melodies of the choir. It was, however, in the schools 
of the true philosophers, and in the ages illuminated by the light of 
faith, that the vague and imperfect speculations of the ancient sages 
assumed the character of exact knowledge. ‘'The reasonable spirit,” 
says Louis of Blois, «¢is so noble, that no frail good is able to satisfy 
it.”’* «* Mundus propter te factus est,’”? says St. Bernard, “ideo mun- 
dum non ames, quia mundus non est te dignus, quum sis eo longe dig- 
nior.’’ Fallacious are the things which cannot always remain with us ; 
things, adds St. Gregory, ‘‘ which cannot exvel the want of our minds.” 
‘Great is the dignity of the rational creature,’’ exclaims Hugo of St. 
Victor, ‘*to whom nothing less than the supreme good suffices, and 
great is its liberty, since it cannot be compelled to accept it.’t St. 
Augustin had said the same. ‘+ Nothing temporal can satisfy the soul, 
whose seat is eternity,’’{ a proposition admitted by the modern poet, 
though with a senseless restriction. 


“There is a fire 

And motion of the soul which will not dwell 
In its own narrow being, but aspire 

Beyond the fitting medium of desire ; 

And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, 
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire 

Of aught but rest ; a fever at the core 

Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.’ 


The feeding of this fire is nevertheless represented by Plato, not as a 
fatal exercise, but as preserving the sustenance necessary for the intel- 
lectual health. «*'The entire soul,” saith he, «in the best natures, re- 
ceives a more honourable condition from possessing temperance and 
justice with wisdom, than the body acquires strength and beauty from 
health, in the same proportion as the soul is more honourable than the 
body ; therefore, whoever has sense, will live, making all things tend to 
this end ; in the first place honouring instruction which gives him such 
a soul, and despising every thing else.”§ How brightly that heavenly 
fire did burn even in the breast of warlike men in the most chivalrous 
ages, may be witnessed in Godfrey, when in a vision he is represented 
beholding the contrast of heaven and earth. 


‘He bended down 

His looks to ground, and half in scorn he smil’d; 

He saw at once earth, sea, flood, castle, town, 

Strangely divided, strangely all compil’d, 

And wonder’d folly man so far should drown, 

To set his heart on things so base and vild, 

That servile empire searcheth, and dumb fame, 

And scorns Heav’n’s bliss, yet proff’reth Heaven the same.”** 


In vain are all these public and private contrivances, day by day, con- 
tinually throughout the year, to repel, as Thucydides Says, 7d rvanpdv.tt 


* Ludovic. Blosii Instit. Spirit. cap. i. 

+ Hugo de St. Vict. Eruditiones Theologice, tit. vii. 

t De Doctrin. Christ, lib. i. 38. | Childe Harold, iii. § De Repub. lib. ix. 
** Book xiv, ii. Tt Lib. ii. 38. 


334 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


‘«Born,”’ says St. Gregory, ‘to the sorrows of this journey, we may 
indeed have arrived at that degree of fastidiousness as not even to know 
what we ought to desire.”* But what is naturally wished by the human 
will, is justice, as Duns Scotus profoundly observes, for that is its per- 
fection ; since, as the inferior irrational nature has a principle of tending 
to that which naturally agrees with it, so the will has necessarily a prin- 
ciple of tending to justice, which is the end that agrees with its nature.t 
Hugo of St. Victor makes a curious remark to show how clearly the hu- 
man heart discerns that it is made for higher than earthly joys. When 
speaking of the words of Ecclesiastes, that all things under the sun are 
vanity, he adds, **] know not wherefore, but these words when they 
are read sound sweet in our ears. We are glad to be told of our evils, 
and what we do not love we nevertheless love to hear, for we do not 
love our evils, and yet we love to hear of them. The reason must be, 
that by hearing of the evil which we do not love, we are reminded of 
the good which we love; and this remembrance of good, even amidst 
evils, is sweet to the mind, and so much the sweeter as the evils are 
more bitter, which when hearing or feeling we discern to be far remov- 
ed from the good to which we aspire. So that when the sorrows of our 
exile are described and the extent of our misery declared, our mind 
awakening as if from along sleep, suddenly remembers where it once 
was, and from a view of the mighty ruins, it calculates the height of the 
summit from which it fell. This is what renders lamentation so sweet 
to the miserable, and which converts their sighs and tears into such 
delicious food.’ 

The need, however, of a divine object appeared obvious, not only 
from a consideration of the dignity of our nature, but also from a sense 
of what was requisite to procure it so much of present happiness as was 
allowable in the world of wishes or innocent amidst the phantoms of sin 
and vanity. Did any one hope to satisfy his thirst from the broken cis- 
terns of the world’s joy? Phedra, in her sickness, was a symbol of 
the destiny which awaited him; for of him it would soon be said with 
truth, you take pleasure in nothing; you change from one place to 
another; the present is displeasing, the absent is thought dearer. 

obdé o” Gpioxee to mapdy, to 8’ aztdy 
pire epov nyee.l| 


The reason of which calamity was remarked by Cicero, when he 
says that lust can never find an end.§ The ambitious, as Cardan re 
marks, are all inconstant,** for no one who thirsts for visible things can 
ever be satisfied; since, as Hugo of St. Victor says, ‘‘the whole world 
would not suffice to man, who is the lord of the world. The eye can- 
not be satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing.’’*tf ‘*'The world 
cries, I fail; the flesh cries, I corrupt; the demon cries, I deceive ; 
Christ cries, I restore; and yet,’’ adds St. Bernard, ‘such is the blind- 
ness and madness of our minds, that leaving Christ who invites us with 
loving words, we follow the failing world, the corrupting flesh, and the 


* Hom. in Ev. 36. + Duns Scoti, lib. ii, Sentent. Dist. xxxix. 9. 1. 
} Annotationes Elucidatorie in Ecclesiast. Hom, ii. || Eurip. Hyppolyt. 185, 
§ Tuscul. v. 7. ** De Sapientia, lib. iii. ++ Instit. Monast. xxix. 


AGES OF FAITH. 335 


deceiving demon.”’ ‘The more one drinks,” says Richard of St. Vic- 
tor, ‘the more one thirsts, for, to satisfy the appetite of sensuality, the 
whole world would not suffice.”’* Nor is it more able to satisfy any 
of those vague desires which are so powerful in men of acutely sensi- 
tive minds, and which attach them with such affection to the remem- 
brance of their youth, to the days that were embalmed with friendship 
and with poesy. ‘There was atime, too, when I could weep,’ cries 
Schiller; «*O ye days of peace, thou castle of my father, ye green lovely 
valleys! O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood! will ye never come 
again, never with your balmy sighing cool my burning bosom? Mourn 
With me, nature! they will never come again, never cool my burning 
bosom with their balmy sighing—they are gone! gone! and may not 
return.”” Return! perhaps he would not that they should, as the pro- 
found thinkers of the middle age would remark, though his words ex- 
press that wish. Hugo of St. Victor felt this mystery of our heart. «O 
ancient time, where art thou?” he exclaims, « formerly while thou ex- 
isted I loved thee, and now when thou hast ceased to exist, I love thee 
still; nor can thy departure ever diminish my love for thee. While pre- 
sent I loved thee that thou mightest remain, and now that thou art no 
more I love thee, and yet I do not wish that thou shouldst return to me. 
Marvellous desire, incomprehensible affection. What can I love in thee 
if I am unwilling that thou shouldst exist, unwilling that thou shouldst 
return? What is that unheard of affection when a thing is loved, and 
yet its presence is not loved? Who will explain to me this love of my 
heart? The reason why I will not that thou shouldst return again is 
this, that I desire rather to be with thee where thou art now. Formerly 
I loved thee perversely, when I wished thee to remain with me when I 
was in exile, and now I love thee with more consideration, because [ 
wish to be with thee in our country, where thou wilt subsist forever.’’t 
The experience of ages had demonstrated that without a view to the 
final consummation of all perfection in the reign of everlasting justice, 
men are sure to find nothing on their pilgrimage but disappointment, and 
without faith, despair. «* Oblivion on this earth,” cries a poet of France 
in a passage of unmingled bitterness, composed a few days before his 
death, ‘* Oblivion on this earth, and beyond it. Behold, friend, my 
life and my eternity! Oblivion, for I have passed without leaving a 
trace! Oblivion! for how little place demands my grave! Poor, un- 
known, without a destiny, lost in a crowd, atom cast upon the vulgar 
wave, like every other mortal that floats with us, I have gathered and 
borne my crown of thorns, and beyond that nothing.” Behold the 
end of man’s distempered thirst. 


**() blind lust! 

O foolish wrath! who so dost goad us on 
In the brief life, and in the eternal then 
Thus miserably o’erwhelm us.” || 


It is an error to suppose that these melancholy views of the natural 
life date from a recent epoch. Cardan, who never heard the modern 
strains, remarks ‘that in youth, when all things flourish, strength, 


TRESS 


* De preparatione animi ad contemplationem, cap. vi. 
t De Vanitate Mundi, lib. ii. + Brugnot. || Dante, Hell, xii. 


336 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


senses, beauty, and genius, not unfrequently we feel life wearisome.’’* 
All that is not God is nothing. Hence the certain disappointment which 
awaits our vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires; for ‘the hopes 
of men,” as Pindar says, ‘‘ are tossed up and down upon a sea of error.”’t 
Not the highest, firmest seats of earthly grandeur can give them rest. 
Otho the third emperor, was openly joyous, but on account of the warn- 
ing of blessed Heribert, he secretly groaned and wept.{ Excepting the 
thirst for justice or the ardent desire of pleasing God, there is no move- 
ment of the soul which can be trusted without deliberation. <‘‘ Noli 
inniti prudentie tue,’’ says Solomon, * for,’’ adds Richard of St. Victor, 
‘*man knows not what may conduce to good in this life, in the number 
of the days of his peregrination, and in the time which passes away as 
a shadow.’’|| Yes, it was well understood in the ages of faith, that we 
need a divine object; that all else is mutable in man. ‘God alone,” 
says a French historian, ‘‘ can rejoice over his work, and say that it is 
good. When man has toiled and conquered, he lets fall from his hands 
the long desired object, disgusted with it and with himself. Thus Alex- 
ander died of sadness, when he had conquered Asia, and Alaric when 
he had taken Rome. Godefroy of Bouillon had no sooner possession 
of the Holy Land that he sat discouraged on the earth, and languished 
for rest within its bosom.’’ Genius has no privilege here, for its most 
adored creation is sure to crumble into dust as soon as perfected. St. 
Augustin calls the image which we represent to ourselves in conceiving 
any object ‘¢ the son of our heart.’’§ These sons die before us. ‘To 
have this illustrated, you need only hear Schiller speaking of his Don 
Carlos, and accounting for its irregularity. ‘* Some time elapsed,”’ says 
he, ‘* between beginning and concluding it; I commenced the fourth 
and fifth acts with quite an altered heart.”’ Little strange should it seem 
that the struggles of individual unassisted genius prove insufficient, when 
even the sublimest works of religious art in ages of faith, indicate that 
they had not satisfied their authors. The gentle breath of that spirit 
which passed before the face of Daniel, carrying away kingdoms and 
breaking empires—that spirit which animated the artists of the middle 
age, which enabled them to raise those mountains of vaults and towers 
into the air by giving them a force greater than the arms of Titans ; 
that spirit, let it work what it will, is always ill at ease in its dwelling. 
It can extend, and vary, and adorn it, but it cannot rest in it. ‘* See 
these admirable cathedrals,’’ continues Michelet, ‘‘ however beautiful 
they may be, with their towers and their saints in glories, they cannot 
ecntain it. Around the church we must build little churches; it must 
radiate with chapels. Beyond the altar we must raise an altar, a sanc- 
tuary behind the sanctuary.”’ Experience and reflection had convinced 
philosophers of this impossibility of satisfying the thirst of the soul with 
any thing human, and hence it is, that, as Novalis remarks,** ‘‘ every 
science had its god, which was its end. Mechanics lived upon the per- 
petual motion, and their highest aim was the construction of a perpetuum 
mobile. So also chemistry had its menstruum universale, or its philos- 


§ Hieron. Cardani de Consolatione, lib. ii. + Olymp. car. Xi. 
{ Drexelii aurifodina. | De statu interioris hominis, lib. i. c. 24. 
§ De Trinitate, lib. xi. ** Schriften, ii. 231. 


AGES OF FAITH, 337 


opher’s stone. Philosophy sought a first principle; mathematical, the 
quadrature of the circle; medical, a life elixer; political, a perfect free- 
dom with government. The philosophers of the middle age all sought 
the unlimited, though they found only what is limited. They sought 
infinity, though they found only things.” 

Ardent minds, endowed with the faculty of extending the field of pos- 
itive knowledge, would never in those spiritual ages have devoted them- 
selves to dry studies, if the imagination had not proposed a mysterious 
end as the desired result of their labours. Raymond Lully, Albert, 
Picus of Mirandola, Cardan, and others of that type, had all a nobler 
though less practical object in view than what is generally ascribed to 
them, ideal and often fantastical it is true, but still the secret fire which 
instigated them to such prodigious labours. 

But this disappointment was the punishment of pride, methinks I hear 
some one reply. In the mere research or discovery of natural truth, 
these men would have found that rest and satisfaction, which would have 
filled the vacuum of their hearts. Vain pretension of modern philos- 
ophers, which the weakest can see through; for if he who should say 
that he had opened certain great fountains which had been concealed, 
were to say this, at the same time exhibiting every indication of thirst, 
would it not be ridiculous? And is it not absurd when these men who 
affirm that they are not only the lords of fountains, but that they are 
themselves fountains, and able to irrigate the minds of all, while they 
promise this to others, are themselves parched up with thirst? * 

The great masters of the spiritual life discovered that it was the ab- 
sence or presence of the thirst after justice which caused sadness or joy. 
‘© Si quis mundum omnino odit,”’ says St. John Climacus, ‘hic tristitiam 
effugit. Porro, si quis qualibet visibilium rerum affectione mordetur, 
tristitia nondum liberatus est.”’t They saw that in fact men were con- 
Stantly committing the double error of Narcissus and its Opposite, con- 
cluding that a substance is a shadow, as often as they mistook a shadow 
for a substance. ‘To privation all men are doomed on this earth, but 
those are least wretched who are pitied most; for it is not an imaginary 
good as many suppose, to have one’s affections centered upon a heavenly 
end, nor is it a substantial felicity to have reaped the shadows of human 
kindness, which pass like the wind upon the rocks of the desert. 

Goethe represents Tasso thirsting with all the ardour of a youthful 
and poetic genius for the friendship of Antonio, and we think him de- 
serving of pity, because the latter meets his advances with the formality, 
and coldness and distrust of one who makes the world his friend; but 
had he found a heart of other mould, and sought it so, there would have 
only been a postponement of the bitter hour. Happy the man who 
learneth not by experience, when it is too late, the folly of placing con- 
fidence in the stability of creatures, or in any thing but in the very root 
and substance of justice. Are you labouring for the glory which Pindar 
promises to the conqueror, saying, 


Méya te xréos aiec 
@ two ody yépas omer” dyrady tt 
aT TTCTNT WETESCULS Dr erro ee ee na NEL) NEN 
* Cicero ad Herennium, lib. iv. 6. + Scala Paradisi Grad. ii. t Olymp. viii. 
Vou. II.—43 2D 


338 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Do you expect happiness in the friendship of those who are not asso- 
ciated in the privileges of eternal good? You are sowing the wind, you 
are embracing a shadow, ‘‘ quia citius obliviscentur tui homines, quam 
estimas.’? What profound scars does misfortune, and often too that 
which is called by fools prosperity, leave in the soul! How quickly it 
uproots from a heart that is not Christian, all hope, and all poesy! 
How soon one arrives with the evil genius of France at seeing in the life 
of nations as in that of individuals, a cold pleasantry of fate! ‘* Before 
the fall, man was full, because God was his centre; but,’’ continues 
Baader, ‘‘ after it he became internally void, God ceased to be his centre, 
and instead of filling him internally, compressed him from without, and 
hence being unable to sustain himself, he falls with a weight upon some 
thing external, in order to be sustained.’ While thus placed he has but 
one alternative, to be wretched, seeking happiness in the love of crea- 
tures, or to be desiring and hoping, looking towards that primal seat, 
‘subi pulchritudo est et satietas eterna,” and praying in words like those 
with which Dante addresses the blessed spirits :— 

———— ‘O perennial flowers 

Of gladness everlasting, that exhale 

In single breath your odours manifold ; 
Breathe now; and let the hunger be appeased, 


That with great craving long hath held my soul, 
Finding no food on earth.”* 


It is when brought to this state, that according to the writers of the 
middle age, the Father draws a man to Christ: ‘‘for,’’ says the author 
of Theologia Germanica, ** when any thing of this perfect good is uncov- 
ered and manifested to the soul, as if in a moment, there arises in that 
man a desire of approaching to this perfect good, and of uniting himself 
to it. The greater is this desire, the more is revealed to him; the more 
he thirsts, the more he is satisfied; and the more there is revealed to 
him, the more he desires and is drawn. ‘Thus man is drawn to a con- 
junction with the eternal good, and this is the drawing of the Father.’”’t 
This was the direction given to the human intelligence during the super- 
natural ages of which I am attempting the history. It was accurately 
ascertained that the thirst of men was not for any secondary stream, but 
for the great original Source of justice. ‘« At the banquet of God,” says 
Hugo of St. Victor, ‘there is but one dish, but despise it not, for it 
satiates. Many things are in the world, and none of them can fill man’s 
heart, but there is one good with God, and when this is found, all is 
found. ‘Ergo non in multitudine, sed in unitate satietas est.’’’{ The 
ery of the middle ages was that of the prophet, ‘* Mihi autem adherere 
Deo, bonum est,” interpreted according to the comment of St. Augustin. 
‘¢Many were the opinions of philosophers respecting the chief good; 
but he does not say, for me to have riches is good, or to have a crown 
and sceptre is good, or what some of them did not blush to say, for me 
to have sensual pleasure is good, or what sounds better, for me to have 
virtue is good, but for me to adhere to God, is good; this, therefore, is 
the chief good of man.”’|| : 


Ft A A ee ea 


* Parad. xix. t Cap. 54. ¢ Annot. in Ceelest. Hierarch. 
| De Civitate Dei, lib. x. 18. 


AGES OF FAITH. 339 


CHAPTER II. 


Tar such was the thirst of men during ages of faith, will appear 
more clearly as we proceed to inquire in what manner it developed itself, 
and what were its effects ; for in truth, the whole life of man, the whole 
constitution of society, notwithstanding all its defects and abuses, was a 
continued display and evidence of its power. Who sees not that this 
was the thirst which imparted that theocratic character to the nations of 
Europe which induces philosophers like Vico to designate this period by 
the title of a divine and heroic age? Who does not discern that it was 
this thirst which moved men to cover the earth with so many noble 
monuments of piety, so many institutions of mercy ; which rendered the 
whole life of so many great artists devoted to the honour and service of 
the Catholic Church; a kind of continual fever, which made men legis- 
late for heaven rather than for earth, for the celestial rather than for the 
human republic; which drew some from the arid desert of the world to 
seek the living waters in the paradise of cloistered shades, and others to 
devote their bodies as witnesses for justice amidst the profane city; that 
this was the thirst which made the true, devoted pilgrim pursue his way, 
SO wearisome and long, undaunted, and firm, in his fixed resolve to 
measure kingdoms with his feeble steps? What else was it but this 
thirst which drew a St. Dorothea from Danzig to Agen, to venerate its 
holy relics, and to visit the hermit in the dark wood adjacent, for whose 
little chapel thrice she left her home, and made that long journey of de- 
sire in time of war, when robbers infested all the ways, from whose 
barbarous hands she suffered griefs unnumbered? What other cause 
impelled her afterwards to traverse Germany and Italy, to visit Rome 
for the jubilee, with such ardour, that during the whole pilgrimage, it is 
said, she slept but one night, which was the second after arriving in the 
holy city? Was it not also this thirst which gave rise to the intermin- 
able toils of Christain knighthood, and to all the wondrous and acute 
provisions which were prescribed for ministering to the wants of human 
society? But that our path through this thick wood may not seem ret- 
rograde or endless, let us take some one object of unquestioned interest 
as the scope of our enterprise, that by the complete survey of it we may 
have a swift, delightful, as well as an instructive way, in exposing the 
admirable manifestation of this divine thirst. 

In the school before our last, we had occasion to unfold the history 
of churches, with all that related to their origin, construction, and adorn- 
ment. We have seen with what truth the divine words may be applied 
to them, they were made by God. ‘ Since,” as St. Augustin says, 
‘‘from him is every perfect gift, and that to construct those houses of 
prayer, he visited the minds of his faithful, excited their affections, sup- 
plied assistance, inspired their wills that they should will. assisted the 
efforts of their good will that they should accomplish, so that it was 
God who worketh in us both to will and to do his of good pleasure, that 
began and perfected all these things.”** The present has appeared the 
a hte 


* St. August. Serm. 256 de ‘Tempore. 


340 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


proper place for resuming, as it were, that story, and for considering 
the holy offices which were celebrated within these divinely constructed 
walls, and the various festivals which pious devotion commemorated 
there; for the voice of the Church was the language of desire, and the 
expression of that thirst which is assuaged only by justice, only by be- 
holding the face of Him uncovered who is seen veiled upon the altar, 
who is himself in infinite perfection, justice and truth; and if the his- 
torian of France can justly affirm that material monuments, such as 
the cathedrals of Paris and Rheims, are great historical facts which 
speak more than long narrations, surely it will not be irrelevant to the 
enterprise of those who seek information respecting the intimate senti- 
ments of the middle age, to inquire what was the purpose to which 
these were applied, what was the spirit within that marvellous symbol- 
ism which astonishes by its vastness and soothes by its peerless beauty ? 

To minds thoroughly imbued with a sense of justice, the world even 
in that age of Christian institutions presented achaos. The soul of man 
aspired to order, and it hoped to find it in the symbolic ceremonies of 
faith. In the Church alone was the intelligence of man, his true life, 
and his rest. ‘The constant love with which the divine offices were 
celebrated during the middle ages, can be referred to no other source 
but the disposition which is pronounced blessed from the mountain. It 
undoubtedly originated in a thirst for justice, a thirst for order, a thirst 
for the invisible supreme good of which all earthly forms of beauty 
were converted by it into symbols. Let us proceed, therefore, by first 
casting a glance at the history of their institution. 

In the infancy of the Church immediately after the resurrection of 
our Lord, we find that his disciples were always in the temple praising 
and blessing God.* Philo Judzus wrote a book, ‘‘De Vita Christiano- 
rum,”’ in which he describes how the Christians passed their time in 
public psalmody and hymns, keeping vigils during the night, and sing- 
ing in praise of God, making stations at altars and joining in alternate 
chorus.t Lucian, the atheist, in one of his dialogues, laughs at the 
Christians for passing whole nights in singing hymns and vigils.t _Pli- 
ny relates to Trajan that they used to assemble before light to sing 
hymns to Christ,|| and Ammianus Marcellinus, another heathen writer, 
records the custom of the Christians passing the night in their church- 
es. ‘The offices of prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and matins, are 
spoken of in the apostolic constitutions, and by St. Dionysius, the Areop- 
agite.§ ‘Tertullian, in the beginning of the third century, describes the 
early congregation of the faithful before light, and expressly mentions 
the celebration of the third, sixth, ninth, and vesper hours. Origen in 
his third book on Job, alludes to their matins and vespers, and Clemens 
Alexandrinus in the ninth of the Stromata, commemorates tierce, sext, 
and nones, as does also St. Cyprian in his book ‘* De Oratione Domini- 
ca.”’? St. Zeno, in his first sermon to the Neophites, praises ‘‘ the sweet 
vigils of the bright night,’’ and Cecilius with Minutius Felix, calumni- 
ates the nocturnal congregation of the Christians, calling them, ‘late- 


* S. Luc. xxiv. 53. + Suidas in Vit. Philo. Euseb. Jib. ii. c. 17. 
+ In Philopatre. || Lib. x. c. 97. 
§ Cardinal Bona, de divina Psalmodia, cap. 1. §. 4. 


AGES OF FAITH. 341 


brosos et lucifugaces.”” In the same age, St. Hippolytus, the Martyr, 
in a discourse on the end of the world, says, that one effect of the 
coming of antichrist will be the abolition of the psalmody and sacred 
rites of the Church. When St. Basil was detained in prison, some 
clerks and deacons gave money to the guards that they might gain en- 
trance, in order to sing with him during the night the divine offices. 
This is related by John, the Priest, of Nicomedia. In the fourth cen- 
tury there are abundant testimonies, in Eusebius Cesariensis, St. Atha- 
nasius, St. Basil, and St. Gregory Nazianzen. From these it appears 
that the psalm ‘ Deus, Deus meus,’’ and also that «« Benedicite omnia 
opera,’’ were then sung at matutinal lauds. ‘The duty and happiness of 
this early thanksgiving are feelingly enforced by these great saints, who 
describe the solemn beauty of the nocturnal chorus. Palladius, speaking 
of the mountain of Nitria, on which five thousand monks lived in the 
time of the great St. Anthony, says, ‘At the ninth hour, you might hear 
in each monastery the hymns and psalms sung to Christ, with prayers 
and lauds, so that you might suppose yourself passed into a paradise of 
joy.”* St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom explain the particular object 
of each hour’s devotion. At the rising of the sun, it was to return 
thanks to God; at tierce, to commemorate the descent of the Holy 
Ghost at this hour; at sext, the fastening of Christ to the cross; at 
nones, his giving up the ghost; at the setting of the sun to thank God 
for the mercies of the past day: and then they enumerate the nocturnal 
vigils and matutinal lauds at the first crowing of the cock. St. Augus- 
tin, in numerous places, mentions the same offices, as does also Cassian 
in his description of the ecclesiastical and monastic life. Peter Chryso- . 
logus, Synescius, Victor Uticensis, and St. Cesarius of Arles, are equal- 
ly clear in describing the nocturnal vigils, and the daily offices ; and holy 
men in dying used to instruct youths in the manner of observing them.t 
Nilus the Monk, relates that the holy fathers in Sina were killed by the 
barbarians at break of day, at the end of their matutinal hymns. In the 
sixth century, the most holy Benedict furnishes in his Rule an evidence 
of the fervour with which men studied the praise of God; and in the 
following age, his disciple Gregory the Great closes the evidence pro- 
duced by Cardinal Bona, in the history of the divine psalmody. ‘Then 
followed Isidore of Spain, Alcuin of England, Amalarius Fortunatus, 
Rabanus Maurus, Walfridus Strabo, Rupertus Abbas, Hugo de St. Vic- 
tor, and others, who cultivated the exercise of the divine offices with 
the greatest fervour. Thus we discern the gross error of Polidorus 
Virgil, who supposes the institution of the sacred hours to have arisen 
in the time of Pelagius II., whereas Cardinal Bona has fully shown 
that they commenced with the infant Church. Palladius declares that 
he beheld a state in which there were more monasteries than profane 
houses, that the divine praises were sung in every spot, and that the 
whole city seemed to be one church.t In Bythinia arose monasteries 
dxocujzor, in which the divine praises were unceasingly sung night and 
day. Nicephorus relates that one of these was built in Constantinople, 
in which an association of monks, divided into three choirs, maintained 
aT PT re EL NT RUMANIA HI IY 
* Hist. Lauriaca, cap. 7, t Metaph. Duty apud Surium. 12 Septembre. 
+ See Histor. Lauriaca. 


2D2 


342 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


an unceasing psalmody. St. Columban, at Luxeuil, instituted a similar 
monastery, and St. Gregory of Tours mentions another at Agen. The 
same rule was observed in the Abbey of St. Denis, and in that of Tours, 
and in many houses of the Cistercian order. The minds of men ever 
rested upon that divine verse, ‘* Beati qui habitant in domo tua, Domine; 
in secula seculorum laudabunt te.”’ Of the clergy of Paris, in the time 
of St. Germain, Fortunatus says,— 


“Carmine Davidico divina poémata pangens 
Cursibus assiduis dulce revolvit opus.” 


The Cistercian monks always celebrated lauds at break of day, and, 
therefore, in the winter season, after singing nocturns, they always re- 
turned to their cells to spend the interval in study or prayer until the 
first break of light; but in the summer they sung lauds immediately after 
matins.* St. Ambrose furnishes evidence that in his time, people of all 
sorts came to matins on Sunday, men and women, youth and old peo- 
ple, only one or two remained at home to guard the house.t The sacred 
Scriptures every where record that just men in all ages observed the 
break of day to devote it to religion. ‘*‘ Dominus visitat hominem dilu- 
culo :”’ and he sends his prophets rising early.t Job, the mirror of jus- 
tice, rising up early offered sacrifice for himself and his sons,|| whom he 
charges to rise up early to God. The holy David meditates the secrets 
of God in the morning watch, and early in the morning offers praise to 
God. ‘The just are then all united in sacrifice and prayer, and as Hugo 
Victorinus says, ‘‘ There is nothing which Satan so much fears as the 
unity of charity.” The morning is symbolical of piety. ‘The ancient 
Etruscans offered honey to Aurora, which we consecrate with the sweet- 
ness of devotion. ‘The poets represented Aurora as mounted upon Pe- 
gasus, because the soul is then light to fly upon the wings of contempla- 
tion. Some thought it was called Aurora, from the golden colour of the 
sky. ‘Taking occasion from this emblem, the writers of the middle age 
observe, that we ought to shine in the morning with the gold of charity, 
and, that as the poet Nevius speaks of blushing Aurora, so should the 
modest colour represent the grace of chaste purity in our souls. Homer 
calls the morning divine, because it brings us light, which is the sym- 
bol of the divinity. Therefore with the rising light the children of di- 
vine light, emulating the holy angels, who are called the morning stars, 
sing praises to the Author of light, and shine to him with joy.§ St. 
Ambrose says, that even the example of the birds should admonish men 
to praise their Creator at the rise of morning, and to begin the day with 
the solemnity of psalms.** Celebrated, say the Fathers, is the statue of 
Memnon, described by Philostratus and Callistratus, which of its own 
accord when first illumined by the golden rays of morning, used to emit 
a sweet and ravishing sound, an emblem which might remind men to 
adore the majesty of their Creator at the rising of the sun. Durantus 
Tholosanus says, that the hour of tierce used to be called the golden 
hour. In the canonical law, it is styled sacred, because it is at this hour 
that the sacred mass is celebrated with solemnity on days of high festi- 


* Card. Bona, de divina Psalmod. 142. + S. Ambros, Serm. 34. de Tempore. 
+ Eccl. xxxix. 6. | Job. vii. 18. 
§ Card. Bona, de divina Psalmod. 145. ** Exam. lib. ivi-csi li 


AGES OF FAITH. 343 


val, as the ancient custom of the Church has ordained in order to com- 
memorate the descent of the Holy Ghost. 

On the various parts of the divine offices let us now briefly dwell. 

Photius says, that a hymn is so called, « quasi ixouvnocs,”’ that is, a 
commemoration of something past. Eusebius speaks at length on the 
hymns which the Christians used to sing in the very infancy of the 
Church. The proses, or sequences, in which we trace the first begin- 
ning of the rhyme which distinguishes the modern from the ancient 
classic poetry,* are said to have been invented by Notker, a monk of St. 
Gall, in the year 880, whose version of the Psalms in German is still 
extant; but this monk affirms that he had seen the first model of them 
in a missal of the abbey of Jumiéges, which was burned by the Normans 
in the middle of that century. The celebrated sequence, «« Veni, Sancte 
Spiritus,” is attributed to Hermann, or to Pope Innocent III. That of 
Dies Ire is ascribed to [Thomas Celanus, of the order of St. Francis, in 
the thirteenth century. Of the same order was Jacoponus, who in the 
fourteenth, composed the Stabat Mater. Peter of Compostella is sup- 
posed to have been the author of the Salve Regina and the Alma Re- 
demtoris. ‘The universal adoption of the Roman Breviary, which is 
acknowledged to have been the slow and successive product of time, 
experience, piety, and the study of the Scriptures, was one of the happy 
effects, resulting in the middle ages, from the power of the Holy See, 
aided by the zeal of the nations, and the desire of devout kings. ‘We 
should do all things that the Lord has ordained with order,” says St. 
Clemens, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. «He has wished that 
we should render him certain duties at certain hours ; he has also deter- 
mined certain places and certain persons, where and by whom his wor- 
ship should be celebrated: he has assigned to the sovereign pontiff his 
functions, to priests the place where they should offer the sacrifice, and 
to the Levites all the detail of their ministry.”” It was not, however, 
possible, in the first ages, to prevent the introduction of some diversity 
of customs in the celebration of the Divine offices; but this was finally 
obviated by the express and positive enactment of the Church. <«Con- 
formity and unity in the things which relate to the glory of God, must 
always be preserved in the Catholic Church,” says the Bull of Clement 
VIII, « being founded under one head, Christ our Lord, and subject to 
his vicar on earth. Especially must that uniformity be maintained for 
ever in the prayers, and by adhering to what is contained in the Roman 
Breviary, that in the Church diffused throughout the whole world, God 
may be always praised and invocated by the faithful of Christ, in one 
and the same order of prayers and song.”’+ Walafrid Strabo, who lived 
under Louis-le-Debonnaire, attests, that in almost all the Churches of 
the Latins, the customs, ritual, and liturgy of Rome prevailed, on ac- 
count of the privilege of the Roman See, and the wisdom of its prac- 
tices. He wrote thus at a period long before the Church had made a 
Jaw to enforce this uniformity; which proves the Catholic tendency 
which, in all times and in all things, obliges every Church to gravitate 
towards Rome. 

* Pasquier Recherche de la France, lib. vii. 
{ Bullarium, Clemens VIII. Bulla, Cum in Ecclesia. 


344 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Any departure, however slight, or capable of defence, from the gen- 
eral practice of the Church, was felt as an injury by holy men. St. 
Bernard supplied an instance, on his first arrival at Paraclet, which he 
reached as they were sounding the bell for vespers. He went, there- 
fore, straight into the Church; but he was shocked on hearing the supe- 
rior, when repeating aloud the paternoster, use the word panem super- 
stantialem, instead of quotidianum. ‘This sounded ill in his ears as a no- 
velty. When he came to speak to Heloisa respecting it, she proceeded 
indeed, with the utmost modesty and grace, to prove, by Greek and He- 
brew, by Scripture and the Fathers, that this was the proper reading. 
Abeillard too, hearing of what had passed, wrote a learned letter to St. 
Bernard, in which he shows that St. Matthew, who gives the whole pray- 
er, and who had heard it from Jesus Christ, uses this word; whereas 
St. Luke only gives a part of it, and he had only heard it from St. Paul. 
Moreover he showed that the Greek Church follows in this point St. 
Matthew, who wrote in Hebrew, in preference to St. Luke, though he 
wrote in Greek. Notwithstanding these arguments, St. Bernard adhered 
to his first opinion, that it would have been better to have followed the 
common universal usage of the Church. 

Charlemagne lent his assistance to carry into effect the great object 
of the ecclesiastical rulers, to maintain one universal liturgy among the 
nations of Christendom :—* Ut non esset dispar ordo psallendi, quibus 
erat compar ardor credendi :’’—that those who were united by the sacred 
reading of one holy law, might be united also in the venerable tradition 
of intonation; and that the different celebrations of offices might not 
separate those whom the pious devotion of one faith had joined together.* 
When therefore Spain, in the eleventh century, abandoned its Mozara- 
bic ritual to embrace that of Rome, that grand system of universality, 
which gave such an inspiring authority to the ritual of the Catholic 
Church, received its full and final development. So early indeed as in 
the ninth century, Walafrid Strabo regarded this work as nearly termin- 
ated, and he demonstrated its advantages and indispensable necessity by 
the same arguments as those used by theologians of modern times.t 
The Council of Trent, in its twenty-fifth session, referred to the care of 
the Roman Pontiff the great work of the correction and definitive publi- 
eation of the Breviary and Missal. ‘Thanks to this master piece of 
religious wisdom, the Catholic was a stranger in no land. Wherever 
he travelled, he heard the children of the Church sing the same holy 
chants of Rome—the mother and mistress of Christians—and the sub- 
lime tones which rose around the cross of the desert, were the same as 
filled the domes of the metropolis of the Christian world. 

It need hardly be remarked, that although the final adoption of a uni- 
form course of psalmody and reading was the gradual work of time, the 
more awful mysteries which involved the divine fulfilment of the an- 
cient prophecy, were in all ages and throughout the whole world, sub- 
stantially the same. ‘The word Missa, or Mass, though, like the term 
Trinity, not in Scripture, is of great antiquity, and, at least in the fourth 


* Caroli Magni contra Synod. Grecor. de Imaginib. lib. i. 
t De Rebus Ecclesiastic. c. 25. 


AGES OF FAITH. 345 


century, it was used to designate the unbloody sacrifice of the altar, as 
appears from St. Ambrose * and St. Augustin.t 

The Greek word aevrovpyéa, which is derived from a word signifying 
public, is never used by St. Luke excepting in the sense of sacrifice, as 
is proved from his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. In the classic 
poets it is used to express any public function;+{ and in Scripture it 
nowhere signifies prayer. ‘The function, or ministry, which by this 
term the Apostles are said to have discharged, was therefore that of the 
eucharistic sacrifice. ‘The canon of the mass has received indeed some 
alterations since the times of the Apostles; for in the year 440, the great 
St. Leo added four words to it; and about the year 590, Pope St. Gre- 
gory some few others ; but nothing was changed without the greatest 
precautions. Thus, not one saint is named who was not dead a long 
time before the year 400 ; after which, nothing almost was added. ‘The 
Apostles are named in an order different from the present, which dates 
from the time of St. Jerome, who named them as they are now gener- 
ally placed, which is another remarkable evidence of the antiquity of 
the ritual. Indeed, the smallest ceremonies pertaining to it may be 
traced to the most remote period, as in the instance recorded by St. Je- 
rome, who says, that ‘*in all the churches throughout the East, when 
the Gospel is read, there are lights burning, though the sun may shine 
at the time.”’|| We know that in the second century, in the time of St. 
Evaristus, it was the custom to keep holy water even in private houses ; 
in which, during the first ages, were practised all those devotional exer- 
cises of Christian worship, which had connection with art and symbol- 
ism:§ and in short, as a late writer observes, ‘* we can trace, through 
every part of the office, some doctrine or observance of the primitive 
times, and may admire the watchful fidelity with which tradition has 
handed down every little ceremony connected with the first ages of our 
faith.” 

Leaving, therefore, the historical question, let us proceed to consider 
the ecclesiastical offices in relation to our threefold faculty of perception, 
as constituted for estimating beauty, justice, and truth—the develop- 
ment of which, certain philosophers of late have attempted to express 
by the term esthetics; perhaps, indeed, without having sufficiently ex- 
amined whether the particular combination of ideas really existed, for 
which they sought to discover a scientific word. 

Ere we advance, however, it will be well to examine whether there 
be any ground of justice in the accusation so commonly brought against 
the middle ages, as expressed by Milton, who affirms, that ‘* during 
their course the far greater part of men deemed in outward rites and 
specious forms religion satisfied, and that works of faith were rarely 
found.’’ <A sentence evidently expressing the conviction of many 
whom we still behold entering our churches, and with gloom beholding 
the rites that sanctify the pile, darting at the altar and the vested priest 
looks of such suspicion, that one might conclude they were imbued with 
the opinion of Cecilius the philosopher, mentioned by Minutius Felix, 


* In Epist. ad Marcellin. Soror. t Serm. xci. de Tempore. 
+ AEschyl. Eumenid. 363. | Advers. Vigilant. 

§ Rheinwald die Kirchliche Archeologie, 395. 

Vor. I1.—44 


346 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


who says that the Christians in their assemblies lick the blood of a slain 
child covered with flour, and distribute its limbs. For the present it 
will be sufficient to hear the unpremeditated testimony of the men ac- 
cused: for if their adversaries refuse such evidence, and continue to as- 
cribe opinions to them which they disowned with every expression of 
abhorrence, ignorance will be no cloak to malice. 

Lewis of Granada, then, that eloquent Spanish friar, expressly says, 
that ‘all the sacred ceremonies, and other external works of virtue, 
which are not the least part of Christian perfection, are commended 
chiefly on this account, that they greatly assist us to attain to internal 
beauty and elegance of mind—that is, to a fuller knowledge of the Di- 
vinity, to hope, to love, to fear, and veneration of the Divine Majesty.’’* 
Ceremony is derived from the ancient word cerus, signifying holy, 
which also gave rise to the Latin term for men of an exalted station, as 
if the primal wisdom discernible in the formation of languages, had 
chosen in this manner to indicate that superior sanctity ought to be their 
characteristic. ‘‘In no name of religion,” says St. Augustin, “can 
men be collected, unless the bond of certain signs, as if of visible sacra- 
ments,’ should unite them together:’’+ from which Duns Scotus would 
infer, that even under the law of nature there must have been ceremo- 
nies divinely instituted ;{ for though they are nothing in themselves, 
they are yet acts of exterior religion, by which the mind is excited to 
the veneration of holy things, and elevated to heavenly objects; and by 
them piety is nourished, charity enkindled, faith increased, the worship 
of God adorned, and religion maintained. ‘The simple are thus instruct- 
ed, and the true faithful kept distinct from false Christians. Christ 
himself hardly ever performed a miracle without using some ceremony, 
as when he made damp clay, and stretched out his hand to touch, and 
wrote upon the ground. ‘The body should pay its homage as well as 
the soul. ‘Cor meum et caro mea exultaverunt in Deum vivum.’’|| 
Under the three elements of religion, we find doctrinal learning rather than 
knowledge, the religion of the heart, as a thing of customary expression, 
and the symbolic religion of worship; which last remains the peculiarly’ 
positive religious object, and as Fries observes, ‘‘ the most important in 
the formation of the popular life; for certainly positive religion is the 
most living and powerful master and instructor of the people, their per- 
ception and emotions arising from the view of the world constituting 
their deepest and strongest idea.’’§ 

But the clergy were most careful, as Cardinal Bona shows, to teach 
the people that piety did not consist in any exterior observances, though 
these were wisely and holily ordained by the Fathers.** The Catholic 
Church abhors that superstitious belief in the theurgical power of cere- 
monies, and in their meriting an eternal recompence, which some late 
writers ascribe to her; but she knew, as the author of Theologia Ger- 
manica says, that ‘* by means of these rites and institutions many men 
are enticed and converted to truth, who otherwise could not be corrected ; 
and indeed, that few men come to truth who did not first receive these in- 


* Ludovic. Granatensis de Omnibus Sanctis, Concio. ii. : 
t Cont. Faustum. lib. xix.c.11. — { In lib. iv. Sent. Dist. i. 9.7. |] Ps. Ixxxiii. 
§ Religios Philosophie, 177. ** De divina Psal. 499. 


AGES OF FAITH. 347 


stitutions and rites, and exercise themselves in them, while they knew 
nothing else. ‘Therefore laws, precepts, institutions and rites, in submis- 
Sive spirituality or in spiritual poverty, are never despised or condemn- 
ed, any more than the men who use them, who otherwise would be- 
come more inordinate, and worse than dogs or other brutes.’’* 

‘The extraordinary, and to many, unaccountable stupidity of the peas- 
ants, in countries from which the ceremonies of faith have been with- 
drawn, is only the natural consequence of their having been deprived of 
the religious worship, and the exercises of prayer and meditation con- 
nected with it. It is religion acting through this medium which civilizes 
and spiritualizes men. ‘hese poor creatures grow up without any idea 
excepting what is suggested by mere natural and animal wants. « Expe- 
rience teaches us,” says La Hogue, «that by far the greatest portion ‘of 
men can have no doctrine and precepts of manners, unless by means of 
the public worship of religion: so that whenever the sacred rites which 
used to be publicly and solemnly celebrated are intermitted or abolished, 
it follows of necessity, that the rustic multitude and the unlearned peo- 
ple should relapse into the most foul barbarism, and into the most supine 
ignorance of the duties of nature and of society.”*+ What some men 
call Apostolic simplicity, is more acutely noted down by others as Cal- 
vinistical folly. In our age, that Protestant simplicity, of which some 
writers speak in admiration, is only a philosophic term for getting rid 
of God without forfeiting appearances ; far more designed for excluding 
his image from appearing intellectually in the detail of life, than for ban- 
ishing it in form and symbol from those cold temples, in which no hal- 
lowed flame ascends, and where sanctity at one entrance is quite shut 
out. ‘The heart of man knows of no such simplicity. If it loves God, 
it must love to refer all things to him, and to worship him with all the 
beauty of holiness, in spirit and in truth. The sophists who now babble 
most in praise of simplicity in public worship, are men who seem to 
think it a great thing if they profess a mere belief in the existence of a 
God as a sublime abstraction: and as for those who admire it on reli- 
gious grounds, if they were to study the work of Cardinal Bona on the 
Discernment of Spirits, methinks they would find other matters for 
their thoughts besides the danger to which Catholics are exposed of mis- 
taking the operations of nature or of Satan for those of grace.t In fact, 
as theologians observe, ‘‘ External is the natural and necessary appendix 
to internal worship; for we are so constituted by nature, that all the 
sentiments of our soul break forth to the exterior, and become painted 
in the demeanour of the whole body; insomuch, that it is scarcely pos- 
sible to love God sincerely with all the heart, and not break forth in his 
praise, and manifest the intimate sense of divine charity by external 
signs. Why do men love ceremony in religion? It is because they 
wish to enjoy life in all the faculties and divisions of their nature. To 
live is to be happy: and the highest life is that which is spiritual or 
divine. ‘Therefore we desire that in that life all our perception should 
participate, and consequently we wish that our senses, as well as our 
reason, should be excited by a divine object. Even the disposition of 


* Cap. 24. + Tractatus de Religione, cap. 11, prop. 2. 
+ De Discretione Spirituum, cap. 12. 


348 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


body in relation to things external, resulting from a habit of devotion, 
instead of being a scandal to a profound thinker, may only remind him 
of what Malebranche says, ‘that every thing which passes mechani- 
eally within us, is worthy of the wisdom of our Maker.’* Besides, 
man being constituted of a body and a soul, it is just that the body, 
with its various abilities, which are so many gifts of God, should come 
forward on the side of religion. Further, it is the nature of man to 
need external assistance to enable him to rise to the meditation of divine 
things ; therefore internal piety requires to be excited and nourished by 
ceremonies, and certain sensible signs. Moreover, every man ought 
to be religious and pious, not only so as to be conscious within him- 
self that he worships God, but also that he should promote the piety 
and instruction of the men with whom he lives, and of those who are 
entrusted to his care; and this cannot be done unless we profess, by 
some external sign, the intimate sense of religion with which we are 
animated.’’t 

In the ceremonial and discipline of the Church, there was no part 
without its use. That which might seem the most trifling, had its 
proper object, and served, in some way or other, to promote habits of 
humility, order, patience, recollection, and religion, so as to build up 
the Catholic character. Hence, the Fathers of the Council of Trent 
pronounce an anathema against all who should say, that the received 
and approved rites of the Catholic Church may be despised or omit- 
ted, ‘‘ad libitum,”’ by the priests, or may be changed by any pastors 
of the Churches.t A most important and incalculably beneficial sen- 
tence—which delivers Catholic piety from being at the mercy of weak, 
ignorant, though perhaps well meaning men, who, in proportion to their 
weakness and ignorance, are generally vain of being reformers or modi- 
fiers of ancient things. 

These approved ceremonies of the Church are called, by Hugo de St. 
Victor, Sacraments of Devotion. He divides them into three classes— 
the first consisting in things, such as the aspersion of water, the recep- 
tion of ashes, the benediction of palms and tapers; the second in actions, 
as the sign of the cross, the exsufflations, the extension of hands, genu- 
flexions ; and the third in words, as the invocation of the blessed Trin- 
ity, and that of Deus in adjutorium—for words themselves are sometimes 
sacraments. || 

There would be no end of following theologians in remarking all 
the uses of these external rites to imprint the mysteries of our faith 
on the understanding. ‘They show that, from the exorcisms and insuf- 
flations used in baptism, it was easier to understand than the unlearned 
would have found it from the Scriptures, that children are born under 
the yoke of the demon, and infected with original sin: that, in like man- 
ner, the ashes strewed on the heads of men at the beginning of Lent, 
teach them, in a most forcible manner, the vanity of all earthly things, 
and that, in holy week, the solemn ceremonies of the Church recall and 
imprint a knowledge of the mysteries of human redemption. Certain 


* Recherche de la Verité, lib. v. 
t De la Hogue Tractat. de Religione, cap. 2, prop. 1. t Sess. vii. Can. 13. 
i Hugo de St. Victor, Eruditiones Theologice de Sacramentis, lib. ii. pars ix. 1. 


AGES OF FAITH. 349 


it is that the Catholic ceremonies, besides answering these ends, con- 
duce, in all ages, to the defence of the faith against innovaters, as when 
St. Augustin drew an invincible argument from the use of exorcisms in 
baptism against the error of the Pelagians.* 

We are told incessantly, with shouts of defiance, that the rites of the 
Catholic Church addressed themselves to the imagination; as if, in the 
estimation of sound philosophy, it were an egregious offence to address 
the imagination, which is one of the powers of the soul, given to vivify 
and govern the interior man. But will not reason admit, that those per- 
sons ought chiefly to be protected who are chiefly in danger? And 
who are so much exposed to the wiles of the ancient enemy as persons 
to whose minds the greatest variety of images are continually present- 
ing themselves? Who so liable to sundry distractions and temptations, 
against purity, against charity, against faith? Who so likely to be ter- 
rified at the approach of death, and recalled to the world by images of 
flesh and blood, by the wretched phantoms of vanity and sin? Assur- 
edly it is a greater marvel to see a man of much imagination hold fast 
his faith, than to see it kept by one who is more under the control of 
unimpassioned and abstract reason. 

As for the charge of captivating the understanding by means of cere- 
monies, the men who produce it should learn from Malebranche, that 
their senses are not so corrupted as they imagine, but that it is the more 
interior part of their soul, their liberty, which is corrupted; that it is 
not their senses which deceive them, but that it is their will which de- 
ceives them by its rash judgments.t If, however, the church had or- 
dained her ceremonies with a sole view to gratify the imagination, there 
might be some grounds for censure, even in reference to the beauties 
of poetry and art: because, although, in every excitement to spiritual 
activity, there is indeed a kind of pleasure, still emotion, as such, is not 
beautiful; but these rites are addressed not alone to the imagination ; 
they are no less so to the affections and to the understanding of the in- 
structed people. Can one suppose that no permanent moral change was 
wrought in the mind by the mere act of slowly and deliberately tracing 
the sign of the cross on the forehead, on the lips, and on the heart, 
when the gospel is announced in the divine mysteries? Can one sup- 
pose that the man accustomed to this practice is as likely to blush at the 
cross in society, and to show vile submission to worldly respect, as 
another who knows of no such practice? At the end of each lesson in 
the choral office, the reader turns to the altar saying, Tu autem, Domi- 
ne, miserere nobis, because, as holy writers say, even that work of read- 
ing cannot be without some fault, since, if he read well, the mind is 
tempted with elation, and if ill, confusion follows; therefore, he who 
reads, stands always in need of the mercy of God, lest a work, in itself 
good, should be either corrupted by pride or rendered ineffectual by 
false shame.t Can it be thought that to one instructed in this meaning, 
the mere ceremony does not incline him to humility, and warn him to 
beware how he hears as well as reads the divine word? And what, after 
all, are the first impressions created by the whole ritual? « Were 1 to 
ene St) eet ed ape ek 

* De la Hogue, de Sacramentis in Genere, cap. 7, prop. 2. 


t De la Recherche de la Verité, i. + Bona, de divina Psalmodia, 389. 
aE 


350 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


enter one of their churches now,”’ says a writer of the last century, ‘it 
would be apt to put me in mind of what St. John tells us he saw once in 
a vision. ‘Another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden 
censer: and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer 
it with the prayers of the saints upon the golden altar which was before 
the throne of God. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the 
saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand.’ ‘These lighted 
altars naturally made me think of what the good old Simeon said of Christ, 
‘A light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.’ ”’ 

Similar are the sentiments expressed by the celebrated Lavater on 
finding himself in a catholic church. ‘He doth not know thee, O Je- 
sus Christ, who dishonoureth even thy shadow? I honour all things,”’ 
continues this philosopher, ‘‘ where I find the intention of honouring 
thee. I will love them because of thee. I will love them provided I find 
the least thing which makes me remember thee! What then do I behold 
here? What do I hear in this place? Does nothing under these majes- 
tic vaults speak to me of thee? ‘This cross, this golden image, is it not 
made for thy honour? ‘The censer which waves round the priest, the 
gloria sung in choirs, the peaceful light of the perpetual lamp, these light- 
ed tapers, all is done for thee! Why is the Host elevated, if it be not to 
honour thee, O Jesus Christ, who art dead for love of us? because it is no 
more, and thou art it, the believing church bends the knee. It is in thy 
honour alone that these children, early instructed, make the sign of the 
cross, that their tongues sing thy praise, and that they strike their breasts 
thrice with their little hands. It is for the love of thee, O Jesus Christ, 
that one kisses the spot which bears thy adorable blood; for thee, the 
child who serves, sounds the little bell, and does all that he does. The 
riches collected from distant countries, the magnificence of chasubles, 
all that has relation to thee. Why are the walls and the high altar of 
marble clothed with verdant tapestry on the day of the blessed sacra- 
ment! For whom do they make a road of flowers? For whom are 
these banners embroidered? When the Ave Maria sounds, is it not for 
thee? Matins, vespers, prime and nones, are they not consecrated to 
thee? These bells within a thousand towers, purchased with the gold 
of whole cities, do they not bear thy image cast in the very mould? Is 
it not for thee that they send forth their solemn tone? It is under thy 
protection, O Jesus Christ, that every man places himself who loves 
solitude, chastity, and poverty. Without thee, the orders of St. Bene- 
dict and of St. Bernard would not have been founded. ‘The cloister, the 
tonsure, the breviary, and the chaplet, render testimony of thee. O de- 
lightful rapture, Jesu Christ, for thy disciple to trace the marks of thy 
finger where the eyes of the world see them not! O joy ineffable for 
souls devoted to thee, to behold in caves and on rocks, in every crucifix 
placed upon hills and on the highways, thy seal and that of thy love! 
Who will not rejoice in the honours of which thou art the object and 
the soul? Who will not shed tears in hearing the words, ‘ Jesus Christ 
be praised?’ O the hypocrite who knoweth that name and answereth 
not with with joy, amen. Who saith not with an intense transport, 
Jesus be blessed for eternity! for eternity !’’* 


* Empfindungen eines Protestantin in einerl Katholischen Kirche. 


AGES OF FAITH. 351 


Another famed objection to the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic 
church, was grounded on the supposed discovery that certain forms of 
expression adopted in them had been used by the ancients in their false 
religions ; and this was proclaimed with a vociferation of exulting tri- 
umph by the very sophists who were themselves inclined to revive the 
spirit and doctrines of the heathen philosophy. Polydore Virgil seems 
to have been so pleased with what he had written on this point, that, al- 
though he continued to profess himself a Catholic, as to human eye, he 
really became one in heart at his death, yet, he looked on with the 
greatest apparent indifference while England was separating herself 
from the communion of the faithful. ‘These men, so proudly learned, 
became fools, losing by pride what they gained by curiosity. ‘Io the 
profound thinkers of the ages of faith, there would have been nothing 
novel or startling in the proposition itself. Tertullian had shown that 
the ceremonies of the heathens, which resembled those of the Catholic 
church, had been transferred from the divine law to the worship of su- 
perstition,* and Gregory Nyssensis, and heodoret had affirmed that 
even some may have been wisely borrowed from them by the holy Fa- 
thers, and employed to the worship of the true God.t ‘The advantage 
of adopting and sanctifying some Pagan customs, was stated acutely in 
the following words by the venerable Bede. << Pertinaci Paganismo 
mutatione subventum est, quum rei in totum sublatio potius irritasset.” 

The conduct of the Church in adopting such ceremonies, was, in fact, 
only conformable to that of the Deity himself; for in his first covenant 
with Abraham he established circumcision as a most solemn and reli- 
gious rite, yet this was in use among the heathens as a religious rite 
long before the time of Abraham, as is proved by Michaelis. To use 
the types or figures of a future Messiah in the Christian Church, would 
no doubt have been deemed inconsistent and monstrous, but it was im- 
possible to infer that there was no one law, no one ceremony in the Jew- 
ish ritual, that the Christian Church could adopt. You have borrowed 
your ceremonies from the Pagans, said the modern heathen; but one 
might have thought that the answer immediately sent forth would have 
left Middleton without any disciple bold enough to repeat his calumny.t 
Granting all that he would have granted, where could he find a prohi- 
bition in the law of Christians, from sanctifying every thing by prayer? 
While, on the other hand, with what victorious power might not the 
followers of Christian antiquity have advanced on their side, and proved 
that the very men who thus accused them were themselves guilty of 
having borrowed, not the ceremonies, which of themselves were nothing 
in the world, but the very spirit, sentiments, and language of the Pa- 
gans? For let us consider how stood the two divisions of men opposed 
under these banners. The one were possessed of doctrines and man- 
ners perfectly unlike those of the ancient world, though it is true, some 
of the early sages, in availing themselves of the great primitive traditions 
of the human race, had said many things that seemed to express the 
beauty and wisdom of the Catholic philosophy; but in the others no 


* De Prescript. cap. 40. 
} Greg. Nyss. in vita Thaumat. Theodoret. lib. viii. de Cur. Gree. Affect. 
+ A Popish Pagan, the fiction of a Protestant Heathen. London, 1743. 


352 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


eye could discern any opposition to the spirit and habits of the heathen 
lore. We can pass from the classic authors of antiquity, and even from 
the profane poets, to their great writers, without observing any sudden 
transition or change. ‘Their moralists rise no higher than the flight of 
Cicero or Seneca. ‘Their views of human character differ in no respect 
from the representations given by Euripides, Plautus or Terence. We 
find in none of their writers those sentiments and features which were 
peculiar to the Gospel, which rendered it in the eyes of Pliny and Taci- 
tus, an execrable superstition. Certainly their adamantine authors, as 
they styled each other, would have given no offence had they appealed 
to the judgment of the forum or the Areopagus. 

But now dismissing these unworthy objections as fitting only in the 
men who cherish them, let us proceed to contemplate in quiet medita- 
tion the beauty and wisdom of the solemn offices, which were observed 
within the holy precincts of the Catholic Church; and if Xenophon saith 
truly, that there is nothing among men so useful and so beautiful as 
order,* well may admiration be awakened at the memory of them: plan- 
et-like in their movement, constant in their duration, universal in their 
observance, so that holy writers of the middle ages, like St. Columban, 
St. Boniface, and St. Gregory, of Tours, could apply no other epithet 
to them, but «that course divine,’’—universal, I say, and like the great 
operations of nature, extended over every part of the earth, for by means 
of the monastic institutions, these celestial sounds were as familiar to the 
desert as to the city; they were heard in the solemn depth of forests, on 
the wildest mountain pass, and they were borne by howling winds, from 
rock to rock, along with the shriek of sea-birds over the ocean wave. 

Nature herself seems to point out the distinction of hours. The Py- 
thagoreans used to take morning walks alone in places of silence and 
repose, where were temples and groves, and other objects proper for 
acting upon the mind. ‘They would not speak to any one until they 
had composed their minds rightly in solitude and contemplation; for 
they esteemed it a turbulent thing to go amongst the crowd immediately 
after rising from sleep. ‘Therefore, they always observed this matutinal 
walk, especially in temples, where they could be found, or if not, in such 
places as most nearly resembled them. In the evening they used to 
resume their walk, not alone, but two or three together, that they might 
repeat what they had learned in the day, and recall what they had done, 
and so exercise their memory.t 

Chrysippus with Seneca says, that the Hours are sisters of the Graces, 
but elder in birth. Homer, in his hymns, calls the Hours wise, and 
Orpheus styled them chaste, and beautiful, and innocent. ‘These ex- 
pressions in their application are unintelligible to one who has only in 
mind a mode of employing the hours, like that of the degenerate times 
described by Martial, which consists in devoting the first to salutations 
and compliments, the middle to litigation, to business of various kinds, 
or to entertainment, and the last to banqueting and repose ;t but in what 
justice do they seem founded to the Christian ear, when remembrance 
suggests their employment by the Church and by Catholic men in ages 
of faith! Good men and holy might sometimes be dismayed at observ- 


* Giconom. cap. 8. + Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita, cap. 21. { Lib. iv. Epig. 8. 


AGES OF FAITH. 353 


ing that they occasionally felt wearied internally even by the operation 
of the works of God, if they had not been accustomed to receive and 
remark with deep attention the councils and encouragements of the 
Church, to whose offices we are in general far from sufficiently apply- 
ing for a solution to difficulties in the study of philosophy. ‘The love 
of variety, arising from a sense of our own infinity, which implies con- 
stant renovation, and development, is not a vain or criminal propensity, 
since it is part of our nature which God hath made; and the Holy Ghost 
foreseeing that the spectacle and course of the external world might oc- 
casionally prove wearisome to human minds, prompted the Church to 
add in grateful praise of the eternal Founder of things who ruleth night 
and day, those remarkable lines: 


‘** Et temporum das tempora, 
Ut alleves fastidium.” 


St. Athanasius observes, that from the creation of the world until 
Christ, the day preceded the night, as we read in Scripture; but from the 
coming of Christ, the night precedes the day ; and thus we begin to cele- 
brate the day solemnly from the vespers of the preceding day. ‘This was 
typical to show how from light men were to decline to darkness, from 
God to errors and idolatry; but from the time that the sun of justice, 
Christ, rose upon us, we are brought out of darkness into the light of 
divine faith.* The monks of Mount Athos consider the day to begin 
from midnight, because it was then that the resurrection of our Lord 
took place; and in allusion to this the Church exclaims, ‘‘ O vere beata 
nox que sola meruit scire tempus et horam, in qua Christus ab inferis 
resurrexit,’’ as if even the very time itself were endowed with intelli- 
gence, and more than in poetic figure blessed. The holy Fathers are 
full of praises of the night generally. The night, say they, is innocent, 
though it is the time of committing crimes, for the mind ought to be 
accused, not the time. St. Jerome says, ‘it is good to meditate during 
the day, but nocturnal meditation is still better; for in the day various 
necessities interpose, and cares and occupations distract the mind, but 
the night is the time of peace and quietness, most favourable for prayer 
and watching.”’t Therefore, St. Chrysostom says, “the night is not 
made for us to pass the whole of it in sleeping and repose. Witness 
these workmen, these sailors, and merchants. ‘The Church of God 
rises at midnight. Rise thou, also, and observe the choir of the stars, 
the profound silence, the great quiet, which of itself can charm the pas- 
sions of a troubled heart. Be amazed at the wonderful dispensation of 
thy God. Then the mind is purer, lighter, more subtle. This dark- 
ness and silence are enough to inspire it with compunction; but if you 
behold the heavens studded, as it were, with innumerable eyes, you will 
take delight in admiring the wisdom of the Creator. God is moved by 
nocturnal prayers, if you make the time of repose that of penitence.’’t 
Speaking of the constant prayer and psalmody of the perfect Christian, 
Clemens Alexandrinus adds, ‘ dana xai vixtwp ebyat naaw. ** The day,” 
says ‘Tertullian, ‘dies in the night, and is buried in darkness. The 


* Athan. in 99, Sac. Script. 54. Gen. i. 3. 
+ Ep. 36, De Observ. Vigiliarum, tom. iv. + Hom. 26, in Act. Apost. 
Vou. Il.—45 2E2 


354 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


honour of the world is shrouded, and all substance is enveloped in black- 
ness. All things are silent and amazed. Every where are justice and 
rest. ‘Thus nature mourns for the departed light.”* St. Chrysostom, 
who had not foreseen what we now behold, in enumerating the benefi- 
cent works of God, takes especial notice of the merciful ordination of 
night to oblige men to suspend their labours who might otherwise be 
induced by avarice to deprive themselves of necessary repose. It is 
night when the woods and the wild seas rest. ‘‘ Behold,’’ he exclaims, 
‘‘ what tranquillity, what profound silence! Every thing in nature is 
hushed, every thing is in repose, even beasts and monsters possess quiet 
in sleep’s calm bliss: there is an end also of complaint, and of those 
groans which proceed from the miseries of human life. The night is 
like a favourable port in which all men forget the storms with which 
they were agitated during the day.”’t There is an end of the combats 
of ambition. ‘The friendly night, as A%schylus sings, wide over hea- 
ven’s star-spangled fields, holdeth her awful reign,t and even the intem- 
perate passions of the heroic world professed submission to its sway. 


yvé S ndn ceréSev* GyaSov xav vuxTi meSéoSaw.|| 


‘‘Fatigued by the labours of the day, is it not,”’ asks St. Cyrill of Al- 
exandria, ‘* through favour of the night that we recover the vigour which 
we had lost?) What is more favourable than the night to promote our 
advance in wisdom? It is the time of those holy thoughts which raise 
our souls towards the Author of all good; it is then that we can devote 
ourselves more freely to reading and to the meditations of the divine 
oracles. Is it not during the night that we find in our soul a greater 
ardour for prayer, and in our voice more religious sounds to chant the 
sacred canticles? At what time does the remembrance of our sins 
present itself to us with the greatest force? Is it not during the 
night?” 

In the last book we remarked how familiar were men with death, and 
here we see in their language abounding in solemn invocations, how they 
sympathised also with black night, the mother, not of the furies, but of 
peaceful and holy thoughts. ‘‘It seems to me,’’ says Clemens of Alex- 
andria, ‘‘ that the night was called ‘sigpovy,’ because at that time the 
soul is at rest from the senses, and partakes more of wisdom. On that 
account the mysteries are chiefly celebrated at night, and they signify 
the separation of the soul from the body.’’§ Eustathius writing on the 
Iliad, cites the ancient proverb which ascribes counsel to the night, to 
which Aischylus seems to subscribe, saying, that during the day mor- 
tals are blind.** In the arrangement of the ecclesiastical office these 
considerations have not been overlooked, for in the office of the night 
we may observe, that the lessons read are longer than those read in the 
day; because, as Cardinal Bona says, the night is for contemplation, 
the day for action.tt It appears from Tertullian, Athenagoras, Arnobius, 
Justin, and Minutius Felix, that the Christians were calumniated by the 
heathens on account of their nocturnal psalmody and vigils. ‘They were 


* Tertull. de Resur. Carnis, cap. 12. + On Compunction, lib, ii. cap. 5. 
t Agamem. || Hom. Il. vii. 282. § Stromat. lib. iv. c. 22. 
** Eumenid. 105. tt De div. Psal. 


AGES OF FAITH. 355 


called a people loving darkness, and addicted to impious rites. ‘The 
Christians might, indeed, have referred them to their own poets, who 
speak of the sacred night,* to Orpheus, who celebrated the night in 
noble hymns, to Cicero, who praises the nightly vigil consecrated to the 
gods,t to Plato, who recommends the employing part of the night in 
transacting public business, and the affairs of domestic economy, for the 
reason that much sleep is injurious to the concerns of both body and 
soul.t But the examples of the Old Testament supplied them with a 
sufficient authority, for there they read that Abraham rose up by night 
with his son to ascend the mountain and obey the voice of God; that it 
was by night when Jacob desired to see the mysterious ladder, and 
struggling with the angel till morning, received a benediction; that by 
night the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt; that Samuel the 
prophet prayed all night to the Lord; that Judith went out by night and 
prayed; that the royal David rose at midnight to confess to the Lord, 
and invited others to lift up their hands by night and to bless the Lord. 
‘The devotion of vigils,’ says Nicetius, ‘‘has always been known to 
the saints. Isaiah cried, ‘De nocte vigilat spiritus meus ad te, Deus.’ 
David says, ‘ memor fui nocte nominis tui, Domine.” Anna, the widow, 
departed not from the temple day and night; the holy shepherds too 
were keeping watch when they beheld the vision of angels in the sky ; 
and the Saviour himself repeatedly reminds us of the need of watching 
by night, and taught us by his example, and admonished Peter in the 
time of the passion, ‘non potuistis una hora vigilare mecum? Vigilate 
et orate ;’ words sufficient to awaken men from the sleep of death. ‘The 
blessed apostles kept vigils. St. Peter in prison, and the disciples who 
were assembled in the house of Mary, and Paul and Silas. As for 
the utility of vigils, 1 must now speak,’ continues this holy bishop, 
‘‘although this can be more easily felt by the exercise than described 
by the words of a narrator; for it is by tasting that we see how sweet 
is the Lord. A good thing, indeed, is meditation by day; a good thing 
is prayer; but much more grateful and efficacious is nocturnal medita- 
tion; because in the day various necessities disturb us, occupation 
deadens the mind, multiplied cares distract the sense; but the night is 
secret; the night is quiet and opportune for prayer, and fitting those that 
watch; know, therefore, that vigils are agreeable to God.’’|| ‘The 
hour of midnight,”’ says St. Basil, ‘the hour of repose and silence, is 
the most favourable to the pure operations of the soul. The sight and 
the hearing receive then no impression from external things, the soul 
is then alone; it is disengaged from all earthly things; it is wholly 
occupied with God. During these precious moments of the night, the 
memory of sins presents itself most forcibly to her.’’§ It is then that 
she discerns the rapid flight of life; while every thing else is at rest, 
the strides of death are more distinctly heard. The whole world seems 
abbreviated before her, as it did to St. Benedict in the night, and she 
may almost behold herself already entering upon the eternal world. 
Ah, well may the night seem solemn ! 

These views may appear ungrounded and paradoxical to the present 


* Eurip. Ion. 85. t De Legibus, lib. ii. t Ib. lib, vii. 
| Nicetius Epis. de Vigiliis Servorum Dei, Apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. iti.  § Id. 


356 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


race of men; for alas! who now is permitted to taste the sanctified 
night of Christians, or even the Ambrosian night of Homer? Dead both 
to grace and nature, if men do not, like some of the ancients, devote the 
night to the rites of Bacchus,* it is made the time of all others in which, 
as if they studied purposely to contradict all that the holy Fathers have 
ever written, they least think of wisdom or of God, and thus the gloom 
of moral darkness is added to the obscurity of nature. To Adam after 
his fall, the natural night seemed full of horrors: 


“ With black air 

Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom, 
Which to his evil conscience represented 

All things with double terror.” 


But during the middle ages, the night continued to appear as it did to 
the primitive Christians. ‘The night time is often favourable to devo- 
tion,” says ‘Thomas a Kempis, ‘‘and of no small assistance to sacred 
meditations.”’+ If we reflect on the observation of Quinctilian, who 
remarked that when sleep was intermitted, thought was assisted by the 
very darkness of the night,t we shall have reason to expect that the 
people of the middle ages who so loved vigils, would be found upon 
investigation to have been eminently that thinking people, which the 
moderns are so fond of being considered. <‘‘The nights are dearer and 
more useful to me than the days,’’ says the Abbot Peter, of St. Remi, 
in a letter to Berneredus, Abbot of St. Crispin. ‘* My occupations by 
day hurry me away violently and fraudulently from myself, but the win- 
ter nights, by their length, confer on me a double benefit; for they give 
rest to my body, and they renew my spirits. They give liberty to 
revisit celestial things, and to enquire into their secrets, and also to be 
remindful of my friends.”’|| Lucas, Archbishop of Cosenza, in the thir- 
teenth century, used also to pass the night in writing, « yet,’’ says the 
writer of his life, who lived with him, ‘to the conventual vigils in the 
Church he would always hasten, humbly singing and watching with the 
brethren.’’§ Cardinal Bona observes, that the heavy and continued 
sleep of worldly people is as much opposed to health of body as to phi- 
losophy, according to the judgment of Aristotle,** of Hippocrates,tt and 
of Avicenna. Then in alluding to the nocturnal vigils, he exclaims, 
‘‘O si scirent homines quam sancte, quam grate Deo, quam salutares 
ecclesiastici, sed et fideles singuli, simul in unum dives et pauper, noc- 
tem verterent in diem nocturnis precibus summo studio insistentes.’’{t 
St. Bernard shows how the night is peculiarly favourable for prayer. 
‘¢ When sleep involves the world in profound silence, then,’’ saith he, 
‘‘ prayer will be purer and freer. How securely does it then ascend to 
God, the sole arbiter, and to the holy angel who is ready to present it 
on the supernal altar! How grateful is such prayer! How serene! 
and uninterrupted by any sound! How clear from all dust of terrene 
solicitude; exempt from all praise or flattery of mortal beholders! «O 
insignem nocturni temporis prerogativam! O sacras noctes omni luce 


* Oppian de Venat. lib. i. 25. + Sermonum iii. 11. { Lib, x. 6. 
|| Petri Cellens. Epist. lib. v. 1. § Italia Sacra, tom. ix. 206. 
** In Cconomicis. tt 2 Apth. 3. tt De divina Psalmodia, 122, 


AGES OF FAITH. 357 


splendidiores !’’’* Not now devoted to Thessalian arts, but conscious 
of angelic light: 
“O nox purpureo splendidior die, 
O nox deliciis omnibus affluens.”’ + 


The heretics, beginning with Vigilantius, whom St. Jerome, on that 
account, calls the sleeper, condemned the nocturnal vigils and psalmody. 
Polidore Virgil, generally a rash and vain writer, affirms that they 
were always held in suspicion on account of the danger of immorality ; 
but such an error, says Cardinal Bona, does not deserve to be confuted. 
In the third century, under Marcellus, it was, indeed, forbidden to keep 
vigils in the cemeteries,:in those low regions where sad night hangs 
round the drowsy vaults, and where moist vapours steep the dull brows 
of those whose limbs are laid to rest, but no where is it written that the 
vigils in churches were condemned by the ancients. St. Philip Neri 
was even accustomed to pass the night frequently in the cemetery of St. 
Callistus on the Appian way.{ St. Romuald had such a horror of sleep 
after vigils, that if any one confessed to him that he had indulged in it, 
he would not allow him that day to celebrate mass.| Crodegand, Bish- 
op of Metz, forbids the canons on pain of excommunication to sleep 
during the interval between nocturns and the early sacrifice, unless on 
account of sickness or with leave. ‘The holy Abbot Alredus, ealls that 
a blessed interval which intervenes after the nocturnal psalmody, until 
the rising of the sun; for then, he says, the heart is most refreshed with 
the sweetness of devotion. It is at this hour that celestial visions have 
been generally imparted to holy men. The rocks and woods of Alver- 
nia were still involved in the solemn gray which precedes the first rosy 
streaks on the eastern sky, when the winged seraph in living flames de- 
scended upon Francis, giving the last signets to his saintly flesh by the 
fervour which it kindled.—Gilbertus, praising the same interval, ex- 
claims,—** Deus bone! hora illa noctis quam sine nocte est, quam nox 
illa illuminatio in deliciis! Orationes ille privatim fiunt, sed privata 
non petunt.” ‘Thus St. Anthony, after passing the night in prayer, 
when the sun rose in the morning, used to say, that it came to interrupt 
his peaceful ecstasy. St. Benedict used to pass the night in the upper 
chamber of a tower which rose above the monastery; and it was there, 
when all the other brethren were taking rest, that the holy man, while 
standing at a window on the south side, looking towards Capua, had that 
vision of the whole world, abbreviated amidst a sudden splendour which 
exceeded the light of the brighest day.§ Pope St. Leo, when at Rome, 
used three times every week to walk by night barefooted from the Late- 
ran Palace to St. Peter’s Church, privately, attended by two or three 
clerks, praying and chaunting psalms.** When St. Odo was a monk at 
St. Martin’s of Tours, he used in the night to go alone to pray at the 
sepulchre of the saint, which was at a distance of two miles from the 
college, and the wolves used to terrify him as he walked thither.tt St. 
Gregory of Tours relates, that Trojanus, Bishop of Saintes, used to 20, 


* Serm. ult. in Cant. t Card. Bona, p. 128. 
t P. Aringhi Roma Subterranea, p. 239. | Petr. Damian in Vit. S. Romualdi. 
§ Chron. Casinensis, 8. B. cap. 35. ** Chron. S. Mon. Casinensis, lib. ii. 87. 


+t Bibliothec. Cluniac. 


358 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


in the darkness of the night, to visit all the holy places which were 
within the circuit of that city, and attended only by one subdeacon.* 
Thus Neemias rose up by night, and a few men with him, and indica- 
ted to no one what God had put into his heart that he should do in Je- 
rusalem. ‘Thus did he go out by the gate of the valley by night, and 
before the fountain of the dragon, and thus did he contemplate the walls 
of Jerusalem broken down, and its gates consumed with fire.“ For,” 
says Hugo of St. Victor, ‘it is the duty of spiritual doctors to rise up 
often by night, and whilst other men sleep, to go about investigating the 
State of the Church, that they may discover how they may correct and 
raise up the things which have been defiled by sins, and overthrown by 
the tempests of war.’’t 

These nightly exercises of devotion were practised also by the laity 
with great assiduity, during the middle ages. One of the most remark- 
able confraternities of the Church of Paris, was that bearing the date of 
the year 1205, and entitled «‘ Confraternitas Beatee Marie Parisiensis 
surgentium ad Matutinas,”? which was composed of pious persons of the 
city, who used to rise and repair to the church at midnight.t It is men- 
tioned in the life of Madame de Maisons,|| that she used to rise constant- 
ly at that hour, and repair to the church of St. Eustache, her parish, 
when they chaunted matins. 

This night of the middle ages must be dear to poets. O how solemn 
sounds the choral song while the nocturnal wind sweeps round the soli- 
tary pile! Angels then may be thought to beat their wings against the 
windows of churches; and sometimes has death seemed to beckon with 
its finger through them, to give salutary warning to a summoned soul. 

The ecclesiastical decrees desired that all the people should come 
to nocturnal vigils.§ It was, in fact, the practice of the laity, in the 
middle ages, as in primitive times, to spend the vigils of festivals in 
the churches, and Drexelius laments its disuse in the wretched times 
in which he wrote. ‘Alas!’ saith he, ‘‘ what a progress! We indeed 
keep many nocturnal vigils ; but it is over cups, amidst dancing, and 
playing at tables.”’** Mabillon, in his Itinerary of Germany, describes 
certain lanterns at the great gates of the church of the monasery of Lux- 
en, and at that of Bonvaux near Chartres, to guide persons who came in 
the night to those churches.tt ‘I remember,” says an ancient monk, 
‘‘that during eight days before the festival of St. Paulinus the Briton, 
Bishop of Capua, who died in 851, the bells used to sound at vespers, 
and that, on the vigil of the feast, lights used to burn on the top of the 
tower.’ tt 

Sometimes persons kept vigils in churches throughout the whole 
night, without any lights burning.|||] ‘The pious Emperor Henry, as of- 
ten as he visited Rome, used to spend the first night in the Basilica of 
St. Maria Majora.§§ Drexelius also mentions the devotion of Mary de 
Cénies, who, with one attendant, used every year, and in the depth of 
winter, to remain during a whole night in the church of our Lady. 


* De Gloria Confessorum, 59. + Allegor. in lib. viii. 11. 

+ Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. i. 1. | In 4to. 1657. 

§ Ivonis Carnot. Decret. pars vi. c. 259. ** De Jejunio, lib. ii. cap. 6. 
tt Iter Germanicum in Vet. Analecta. ++ Italia Sacra, tom. vi. 313. 


\|l| S. Greg. Turon. Miracul. lib. i. 5. §§ Jo. Naucl. Gen. 34. 


AGES OF FAITH. 359 


Thus too, on the festival of the blessed martyr of the Brivatensian 
church, St. Gregory of Tours has occasion to relate, that a devout poor 
man came there to celebrate it, who having fastened his horse outside, 
entered the church, and there spent the night motionless, praying with 
the other people during the whole night, till break of day.* We read 
in the decrees of Ives de Chartres, that when a bishop was to hold his 
synod in a church, ‘all the persons were to be ejected at the first 
hour of the day, before the rising of the sun.’’t 

To this discipline there was a remarkable exception in the sacred 
cave or church in the rocks of Mount Garganum, celebrated throughout 
the whole world on account of the apparition of St. Michael. For, from 
the first light till evening psalmody, sacred mysteries and prayers were 
offered there daily by clergy and people, during which time the doors 
were never closed ; but through fear and reverence for the angelic choir, 
which was said to be present there during the night, no one was permit- 
ted to remain after the last office, when diligent search used to be made 
in order to expel all persons. In the year 1015, St. Henry the Empe- 
ror was received there to hospitality by Ursus, Archbishop of Siponto, 
when he came for the sake of devotion to visit this church of St. Mi- 
chael. Passing the brazen gates, which were the gift of princes, and 
descending into that vast cavern obscure, distilling drops through the 
solid rock, he joined in the offices which were then solemnly sung be- 
fore the great altar at the end of the choir, in which is a fountain of most 
sweet and transparent water. When the office was concluded, and 
every person commanded to withdraw, the saint indeed begged, and ob- 
tained permission, to remain in the church during that night; but this 
was an especial indulgence, which no one else ever enjoyed: and the 
subsequent lameness of the holy emperor was attributed, by contempo- 
rary writers, to the effects of the vision which was then vouchsafed to 
him, when, like another Jacob, he endured an angel’s touch. 

The processions of penitents at Rheims, in the year 1575, took place 
in the night. ‘The Archbishop, Louis de Guise, assisted, walking bare- 
footed along with a numerous confraternity. The litanies, sung with a 
mournful tone, were often interrupted by the sobs and plaintive cries 
of the penitents, which produced a most overpowering effect in the 
silence and horror of the darkness. These pilgrims anticipated, from 
the aspect of public affairs, the destruction of the Catholic religion in 
France, and hence their penitential vigil.|| The night’s dead silence did 
well become such sweet complaining sorrow. 

It is still a devotion at Rome to go by night to the ancient Basilicas 
without the walls. One morning, leaving Rome while it was still dark, 
being three hours before sunrise, as I approached the gate of St. Loren- 
zo, I saw an extraordinary light moving towards me, which soon assum- 
ed the form of crosses of light. Presently I heard the murmur of pray- 
ers, and the solemn chaunt of the pilgrim’s litany ; a vast crowd of per- 
sons became half discernible, the men going first and the women follow- 
ing, and the light proceeded from two crosses, borne along, to which 
lamps were attached. It is impossible to describe the awful impression 


* S. Greg. Turon. Miracul. lib. ii. 21. + Decret. pars iv. 246. 
{ Italia Sacra, tom. vii, 821. | Anquetil, Hist. de Reims, lib. iv. 147. 


360 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


produced by such a spectacle at that hour, and on such ground! At 
first I supposed it to be a funeral train, but on inquiry I was told that 
they were persons returning to Rome, after hearing mass in the basili- 
ca of St. Lorenzo, without the walls. It struck me forcibly that here 
was a faith and thirst worthy of the days of the apostles. The first 
Christians could not have evinced greater fervour than these poor peo- 
ple, who filled the lonely precincts of the eternal city, at the bitter 
hour of damp exhalations, with prayers for mercy, with the praises of 
Christ, and of his blessed mother. At Lucca, there is a holy brother- 
hood whose members are appointed in turn to sound a bell before dawn 
at the doors of such of the citizens as are accustomed to assist at the first 
mass, in order to apprize them of the hour, and light the torch which is 
to guide them to the Church. In the monastery of St. Apollonia, at 
Florence, there is a part granted to a confraternity of pious people, who 
assemble there only during the night. Through the foul womb of 
night, the hum of hasty passengers, who murmur prayers as they re- 
pair to churches, stilly sounds. ‘There is no rest,”’ says St. Paulinus, 
‘‘for the multitude who repair to the festival of the blessed Confessor 
Felix, at Nola.”’ 


“‘ Properant in lucem a nocte, diemque 
Expectare piget, votis avidis mora noctis 
Rumpitur, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.’’* 


Even without the interest of a more than ordinary occasion, the 
watchers who guard the city find them going about it, through the 
streets and squares, seeking Him whom their souls love. It was so 
common a practice to go to the church at matins, that the French had an 
ancient proverb,—*‘ as dangerous as return from matins,’’—to express 
the liability to fall into mischief in the dark from enemies or wolves.t 
Petrarch writes as follows:—‘I rise always at midnight, to sing the 
praises of God. ‘The silence of the night is best suited to this employ- 
ment. Itis the part of my life when I am most myself, and most de- 
lightfully employed. It is a custom I have observed, which has never 
been interrupted but by sickness, and which I shall ever adhere to.” 
We find him dating one of his letters from ‘the most retired corner of 
the Ambrosian house at Milan,’ under that light, and at the same hour, 
in which formerly the living Light arose upon the earth to enlighten 
men.’’—Nicholas Von der Flue, when father of a family at Saxeln, used 
to retire to rest with his household; but as soon as they were asleep, he 
would rise from his bed, leave his chamber, and spend in prayer to God 
all the remaining time till day break. His son, John, says of him, «my 
father used always to retire to rest with his children, but all night long, 
till morning, I have heard him pray in another room. ‘The heavenly 
sweetness with which he used to be refreshed served him instead of 
sleep, so that in the morning, no one ever rose from bed so fresh and 
cheerful as he used from prayer.’’{ It is curious to remark, that while 
private devotion instigated men to this dedication of the tragic melan- 
choly night, the very laws of the state lent their assistance to secure it 
from profanation. By the French laws, all labourers were forbidden to 


* Italia Sacra, vi. + Pasquier Recherche de la France, lib. viii. 23. 
} Leben und Geschichte des Nikol von Fliie, by Weissenbach. 


AGES OF FAITH. 361 


work after vespers. Carpenters alone were permitted to work during 
the night, when coffins were to be made for the dead, or works for fune- 
ral ceremonies erected. It was not even lawful for tradesmen to sell 
goods till the appointed hour had struck, which was generally tierce or 
nine.* ‘The Roman laws prohibited judgments from being passed at 
night, notwithstanding that Minerva had been made to sanction the con- 
trary discipline of her own favoured tribunal.t 
To the night of the middle ages belonged many solemn and poetic 

things, of which the trace only remains, as in some towns of England, 
where, at particular seasons of the year, during the night, one hears a 
small bell tolled a certain number of times, and then, in a mournful tone, 
some rude verses chaunted, which had been substituted, no doubt, for 
the ancient invitation to pray for the dead at that hour,.a devotion to 
which indulgences were attached. In Italy during the octave at all 
souls, the bell for the dead tolls the whole night long, or at least for a 
considerable space about midnight. In the history of the church of 
Durham, we read, the *‘three bells of the lantern were rung ever at 
midnight, at twelve of the clock; for the monks went evermore to ma- 
tins at that hour of the night.”’t On arriving in Italy the traveller is 
soon reminded of the beautiful similitude which Dante draws from the 
tones that sanctify a Catholic night. 

As clock, that calleth up the spouse of God 

To win her bridegroom’s love at matin’s hour, 

Each part of other fitly drawn and urg’d, 


Sends out a tinkling sound, of note so sweet, 
Affection springs in well-disposed breast.’’| 


O, how does a youthful imagination then sympathise with all that the 
holy fathers have written respecting the night! how does it love that holy 
silence which reigns on all nature! ‘The river has still its silver flood, 
but no more its murmur ; the highways are desert, the cabins voiceless ; 
no leaf trembles under the vaults of the wood, and the sea itself, expir- 
ing on the strand, scarcely rolls against it a plaintive wave.§ How far 
is every thing here from the frown of sable-vested night, the consort of 
chaos! How holy is the Catholic night, the night of the middle ages! 
the time in which saints, all over the earth, are assembled to chaunt the 
same sacred hymns, and to commemorate the same great deliverance. 
Some seasons, indeed, there were, as those of Christmas and Easter, in 
which it was in an especial degree the privileged and blessed time; 
nights in which things celestial were joined to earthly, and divine to 
human; in qua terrenis celestia, humanis divina junguntur; for as the 
church of God says, it was, ‘‘ while all things were in quiet silence, and 
the night was in the midst of her course, that the Almighty word came 
from heaven, from the royal throne. Seven times in the year, mass 
used to be said at midnight. At Christmas, in consequence of the ordi- 
nance of Pope St. Telesphorus, in the second century, on Holy Satur- 
day, on the festival of St. John the Baptist, and on the collation of holy 
orders, on the four Saturdays of the Ember weeks.”’** Fora long time 


baa ee a ee ee Je 
* Monteil, Hist. des Francais, tom. iii. 261. 7 #schylus Eumenid. 692. 
+ I..35. | Parad. x. § De la Martine. 
** Benedict XIV. de Sacrificio Missa, ii. Append. 388. 
Vou. II.—46 2F 


362 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


after St. Leo, ordinations used to take place on the Saturday night of 
XII lessons, towards Sunday morning, after the second nocturn of ma- 
tins, as appears from an ancient Roman order which was in the abbey 
of Vendome.* 

But while the Church of God is thus risen at the solemn midnight 
hour, where sit the world’s children? Alas! for them, the night has no 
terrors, excepting when there is a question of going to the assemblies 
of the faithful: worshippers of pleasure—children of night, pursuers of 
private sins, as hot on the scent, as if like their elder sisters, sung by 
fEschylus, they were divinely deputed to follow the trace of blood that 
cried to heaven; who are in constant habits of braving the obscure air at 
the hour when rest is provided for all flesh, are immediately convinced 
that they would contract some fatal illness if the way were to the church 
instead of the festal hall. ‘They might, it is said, meet revellers in the 
streets, and religion might incur disgrace if her temples were to be open 
at those hours, which the moderns, by common consent, think must 
needs be consigned over either to sleep or to Babylonian rites. To them 
we may address tle words of St. Clemens Alexandrinus to the Pagans, 
who were initiated in the orgies of Bacchus, for, as he says, ‘¢in the 
mysteries of the Atheists,’ ‘‘formerly the silent night was to virtuous 
men a veil of sweetness, but now, to you, the sacred night is filled with 
the noise of dissolute speech.’’t If compelled to absent themselves on 
such occasions from the assemblies of the faithful, men were not heard 
in the middle ages to declaim against this devout and most ancient exer- 
cise, or to condemn as imprudent those who maintained its utility, as if 
almost it were an evil as great as heresy, to love the poetical side of a 
religious life. ‘* Because you are infirm,’ said Nicetius the bishop, ‘‘ do 
not condemn the vigils of others. It would be foolish and sufficiently 
foreign from religion to depreciate those who run well, because we are 
unable ourselves to run; though we have not the power, we ought not 
to envy but to congratulate those who have; for as he who consents to 
malice is partaker of the punishment, so, a participation in glory may 
be hoped for from a consent to goodness.’’{ 

But now the approach of rosy-fingered morn is witnessed in the east- 
ern sky, and the melody of choirs is resumed to hail the hour of univer- 
sal lauds to the eternal Founder of things, who ruleth day and night. 
Dominus regnavit now is heard, and the rest which follows of that 
psalm in which, says Hugo de St. Victor, ‘‘ Christ, with admirable 
brevity, is multifariously praised.’’|| ‘The church seems to come forth 
refreshed and more than ever joyous. She descends to speak of all the 
various duties of men, and sings the dawn with transport; for then the 
army of errors deserts the hurtful way; the sailor collects his forces ; 
straits and seas grow calm; at the crowing of the cock, hope returns; 
health is imparted to the infirm; the robber’s sword is sheathed; faith is 
restored to the fallen; Jesus she invokes that he would look upon the 
wavering, for, at his look, sins would cease and crime be washed away 
with weeping; that he would enlighten the senses, and dispel the sleep 
of minds. At the rising of the star of light,—she prays to be protected 


* Chardon Hist. des Sacramens, tom v. c. 6. + Clem. Alex. Protrepticus, c. 2. 
t De vigiliis servorum Dei. Dacher. Spicileg. iii. | De Officiis Ecclesiast. cap. 10. 


AGES OF FAITH. 363 


from all hurtful things during that day,—that the tongue may be tem- 
pered so as to serve no horrid contention, that the sight may be directed 
so as to draw no vanity, that the heart’s recesses may be pure and the 
pride of the flesh humbled; so that when the day shall depart, her chil- 
dren may be enabled, through abstinence, to sing glory to the coequal 
and eternal Three. 

After the offices of lauds and prime succeeded the sacred mass, though 
in times of persecution, when the assemblies of the faithful were necessa- 
rily less frequent, the Eucharistic sacrifice was not daily offered. In the 
great church of Constantinople, down to the XIth century, mass used to 
be celebrated only on Sundays and Sabbath days and festivals, which 
Was a vestige of the ancient necessity. Whereas, in all churches of less 
antiquity, the divine mysteries were daily celebrated according to pious 
usage,* sanctioned by the constitutions termed apostolical.t Mass used 
to be said daily in the time of St. Ambrose and St. Basil, after the ex- 
ample of the apostles; a usage which is acknowledged to have existed 
in the first ages, even by Protestant writers.t St. Cyprien shows that 
mass should be said daily, and that all should communicate daily. To 
the like effect speaks St. Hilary. With the Greeks, they who passed 
three Sundays without communion were said to be excommunicated.|| 
From the sixth century, the daily celebration of mass was a common dis- 
cipline, but it appears that in the seventh it became still more general for 
pious men to assist every day at mass. St. Goar celebrated mass every 
day, and the same is recorded of St. Geremarus Abbot; and Bede affirms 
the same of Ceolfrid, the abbot of his monastery. The bishop, Licinus, 
is also related to have daily sung mass with great compunction of heart, 
but Mabillon interprets the word to mean only having simply recited it. 
In the eighth century, this discipline was enjoined by the decrees of the 
synods,§ and since the Council of Trent, it continued to be the universal 
practice of devout Christians. ‘* When you have risen from your bed,” 
says Louis of Blois, ‘‘ after making the sign of the cross and recommend- 
ing your soul and body to the Most High, hasten to the church as the 
place of your refuge and a garden of spiritual delights.”*** Hence we 
may remark, that on occasions of public danger or calamity, there was 
no necessity, as we read in the Pagan times of Rome, for the state to 
appoint a day of general prayer, for which a form of words was to be 
prepared, for the church had already her appointed course, and there 
was always a sacrifice ready and a sublime invocation for those who 
sought to propitiate the mercy of Heaven. What the venerable Bede 
said of priests, who, without a legitimate hindrance, fail to present the 
divine host to God every day, may well account for the zeal of holy 
men to offer up mass daily. ‘Tell me,”’ cries the bishop Iona, in his 
‘Institute of Laics,”’ ‘tell me, you who come to the church only on feast 
days, are not the other days also feast days? Are they not days of the 
Lord, for on what day does not the church celebrate the victory of some 


* Thomassinus de veteri et nova Ecclesie disciplin. pars iii. lib. i. c. 72. 

t Const. Apost. ii. 59. viii. 35—39. 

{t Rheinwald Die Kirchliche Archezologie, p. 332. 

|| Walafrid Strabo de rebus ecclesiasticis, cap. 20. 

§ Mabill. Prefat. in ii. Secul. Bened. ** Guide Spirit. cap, 2. 


364 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


martyr or confessor?’’* Pope Benedict XIV. considers the arguments 
of those who maintain that mass should not be daily celebrated, on the 
plea that ‘* semper abundantia contumeliosa in se est,’ and that, “ quic- 
quid raro fit, pretiosius fit, cum fit,’’ and that the priest who seldom 
celebrates is usually moved to tears, which he would not be if he 
daily offered. Having refuted these objections, he concludes thus :-— 
‘In this last objection there lies an ambiguity, for, as St. Antoninus 
says, ‘If any one should estimate that disposition in himself, from the 
sensible compunction of heart, profusion of tears, fervour of mind, and 
similar sentiments, so that when he feels these, he believes himself to 
be disposed, and when he does not feel them, he supposes himself in- 
disposed, he walks very uncautiously and is most often deceived. Fre- 
quently those who have no such things are in a state of grace, and they 
who have them are altogether without grace, though they do what is 
gracious.’ ”’ 

Admirable was the diligence evinced by the Church to enable the 
faithful people to perform their devotions without interruption to their 
social duties. Within the churches the divine mysteries were succes- 
sively celebrated from break of day till noon, to suit the early traveller, 
the labourer, the domestic, the student, the charitable matron, the pious 
father of a family. We have seen that in almost every street there was 
a church or chapel, that no time might be lost in passing from the study 
or the workshop, or the palace. The number of altars in churches was 
partly designed for this object. In the church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
at Jerusalem, built by Constantine, there were three altars, but when 
visited by the bishop Arculfus, in the seventh century, it contained five 
altars. There were four in the Basilica of St. Mary, in the Vale of Jos- 
aphat. In the sixth century, it appears from St. Gregory of Tours,t 
there were two altars in the Basilica of St. Peter at Bourdeaux. St. 
Ambrose also mentions many altars being in one church.t In the new 
church of the monastery of Cluny, which was dedicated in the year 
1131, there were twenty-four altars. The altar of St. Gabriel, the 
Archangel was in the tower of the bells; that of St. Michael the Arch- 
angel, was over the portal. The ancient chronicles of Strasburg attest 
that there were formerly in that cathedral fifty altars. In some churches 
a mass used to be said expressly for servants.|| Portable altars were in 
use long before the eleventh century. St. Wilfram, bishop of Sens, 
passing the sea in a ship, is said to have celebrated the sacred mysteries 
upon a portable altar. Bede§ relates that the two Ewaldes offered sac- 
rifice daily, having with them vessels and the table of an altar dedicated. 
Hinemar prescribed that no one should celebrate mass upon an altar 
which was not consecrated. All this discipline prevailed at least as 
early as in the fifth century. 

The Eucharistic sacrifice terminated, the church resumed her holy 
songs, and celebrated tierce and sext, after which followed an interval 
of repose while the day reigned in its fullness. But nothing is constant 


a ee ee 


* Ione Aurelianensis Episcop. de Institutione Laicali, lib. i. cap. 2, apud Dacher. Spi- 
cileg. tom, i. 

t De Gloria Mart. 34, t Joan. Devoti Instit. canonic. lib. ii. tit. vii. §. 1. 

| Lebeuf, Hist. du diocése de Paris, chap. Corbeil. § Lib. v. cap. 11. 


AGES OF FAITH. 365 


with men. Every thing revolves and perishes. ‘ Alas,’’? exclaims 
Bona, ‘‘ we proposed to perform great things when the sun was mounted 
to the meridian, and lo! in a short time, it descends to evening. ‘The 
church is about to sing nones. It is the ninth hour, in which Christ 
died for man, in which man had been expelled from paradise; * the day 
is become old, the night is approaching; such is the frailty of this mor- 
tal life. How soon the day declines, the heat cools, the light sinks and 
is buried in the shade of evening, but we must run our course until we 
shall behold the Lord of Lords in Sion.’’ Nones having been sung, the 
church prepares to celebrate a more august office. 

It is the vesper hour. ‘*Ah, what a symbol is here,’’ cries Bona. 
‘Let us say, therefore, with the disciples, whose hearts burned within 
them by the way, ‘ Mane nobiscum, Domine, mane nobiscum, quoniam 
advesperascit.’ Now evening, the mother of night, will bring forth 
darkness; now sadness oppresses us, and despair sinks us down. ‘The 
waters have come even unto our soul: now a horrible tempest afflicts 
our spirits: the cold of iniquity freezes us, and a wounded conscience 
dreads the terrible sentence of the Judge. Remain with us, O most 
clement Lord, since without thee we can do nothing; we are nothing! 
Thou art our consolation, thou art our refuge and strength; thou art a 
tower of might against the face of our enemies. The night of wicked- 
ness covers all things; the light of truth faileth; depravity abounds: 
charity grows cold; our eyes are turned to thee, that we may not per- 
ish. Remain with us, that the darkness may not come upon us, and 
that the shining light, which shineth to us in that dark place, may not 
be extinguished in the night. The end of life is near; the evening of 
our day: deliver us from the power of darkness, and turn not in anger 
from thy servants; because if thou art with us, we shall fear no evil in 
the midst of the shadow of death, but with the brightness of thy grace 
we shall be enlightened in that region of the dead. It is good to be 
with thee, O sweet Jesus. Remain with us, and turn not away from 
us. ‘These are the shades of evening; the darkest night draws on, in 
which no man can work. Remain with us, and close the door upon us, 
until the darkness shall pass over, and light again rise to visit us.’’t 

O, who can appreciate the charm of these short, pathetic, affectionate 
addresses from the altar, after vespers, when so many a youth is grateful 
to the darkness for concealing his falling tears! 

It is the vesper hour, when the poor soul thirsts and hungers more 
intensely, inasmuch as the trials of the day have worn her down. It is 
now that she seeks the silence of ancient groves, and the peaceful walks 
of moss-grown battlements. The very poet of the secular society is not 
insensible to its influence :— 


‘“¢ Sweet hour of twilight !—in the solitude 
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 
Which bounds Ravenna’s immemorial wood, 
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow’d o’er 
To where the last Cesarean fortress stood. 
Ever-green forest! which Boccaccio’s lore 
And Dryden’s lay made haunted ground to me: 
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!” 


* Durandus Rationale, lib. v. 8. t Card. Bona de Divina Psalmod. cexxii. 
2F2 


366 MORES CATHOLICT; OR, 


Pythagoras prescribed that in the evening, before the hour of rest, 
after the perturbations of the day and the tumult of action, the mind, 
which is then moved like a flood, should be appeased and composed by 
the sound of gentle music.* We read of our Divine Lord, that hav- 
ing dismissed the crowd, he ascended a mountain alone to pray; and 
when it was evening, he was there alone.t In the heart of cities, and 
even wherever the towers of a feudal castle cast their broad shadow 
over the open lands, there was always during the middle ages, a sacred 
portal, sure to be open to receive the pilgrim, at the evening hour, to a 
temple, in which he might compose his turbid thoughts by holy medi- 
tations, joined with those Hypodorian strains, which soothe the imagi- 
nation and tranquilize the heart. 

Vespers were always celebrated with more solemnity than any other 
of the lesser hours. St. Benedict prescribes that they should be fully 
and sweetly sung. 

But now begins night, with her sullen wings, to double-shade the 
desert.— 


“Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, 
While night’s black agents to their prey do rouse.” 


Fowls in their clay nests are couched, and wild beasts come forth, the 
woods to roam. Five, six, seven—the clock has ceased, and now we 
shall hear the toll of the cloister bell for the benediction. Complins 
may represent the end of life, as it is the last office of the day ;—for, as 
Pindar says, ‘* Men are but of one day, and the shadows of a dream.” 
How delightful that calling to memory of the complin hymn, when 
Dante marked, from among the spirits that sat apart in limbo, 
‘One risen from its seat, which with its hand 

Audience implor’d. Both palms it join’d and rais’d, 

Fixing its steadfast gaze towards the East— 

‘'Te lucis ante,’ so devoutly then 

Came from its lip, and in so soft a strain, 

That all my sense in ravishment was lost. 

And the rest after, softly and devout, 

Follow’d through all the hymn, with upward gaze, 

Directed to the bright supernal wheels.” 


Complin sung, silence was observed till after mass the following 
morning. ‘This was prescribed by St. Benedict; and we find the 
observance recommended by all the great spiritual writers of the middle 
age.|| Now succeeded the solemn matin bell, tolling at the hour of 
nature’s silence and repose, which seems like a suspension of this mor- 
tal life! ‘*O awful sound!” cries Bona. ‘*One’s course then seems 
finished. ‘Then we may say, with the holy Columban, ‘0 tu vita quan- 
tos decepisti! que dum fugis, nihil es; dum videris, umbra es: que 
quotidie fugis, et quotidie venis, veniendo fugis, que fugiendo venis: 
dissimilis luxu, similis fluxu. Te ostendis tanquam veram, te reducis 
quasi fallacem. Ergo nihil es, O mortalis vita, nisi vie imago, fugitiva 
ut avis, ut nubes incerta, fragilis ut umbra.’ ’’§ 


* Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita, cap. 15, t Matt. xiv. 23, t Purg. viii. 
|| D’ Avila, Epist. Lxvii. § S. Columban. Homil. de Fallacia Vite Humane. 


AGES OF FAITH. 367 


CHAPTER ITI. 


Tuer divisions of the sacred hours marked, let us proceed to observe 
the general character belonging to all these offices of grace: for there is 
much in them intelligential and abstruse, that deserves deep attention, 
much to excite a reasonable and pious curiosity, and somewhat, perhaps, 
to explain and defend, in consideration of the ignorance and wants of an 
age which has endeavoured to render every thing perspicuous but what 
relates to heaven, and which toils unceasingly to make vain provision 
for the gratification of every thirst but that of justice. 

To have seen the importance of an uniform liturgy, one must have 
felt the necessity for its being unchangeable, and that for the reason as- 
signed by St. Augustin: ‘* Lex orandi, lex credendi;”’ for the prayers 
which the Church uses in the administration of her holy rites, are so 
many proofs of the respective doctrines on which they depend; and these 
prayers could only be preserved from alteration through a long series of 
ages, by retaining the ancient language in which they were originally 
composed.* 

Stephen Pasquier has well said, <I] ne faut rien eschanger de ce que 
une longue ancienneté a approuvé en une religion; voire jusques aux 
paroles mesmes.’’t Divine Providence had caused the language of Rome 
to become, in a certain sense, universal, in order to facilitate the exten- 
sion of the Gospel and the maintenance of ecclesiastical unity, as in ear- 
lier ages he had preserved the Semitic languages in a state of immobili- 
ty, in order, as Walton supposes, to render more easy the migrations 
and external relations of the patriarchs; or, as the Count de Robiano 
suggests, to preserve more unchangeable, clear, and certain, the reading 
of the sacred text.t 

The Germans, Franks, Poles, and all northern nations, when con- 
verted to the faith, received the liturgy in the Latin tongue. ‘The Mora- 
vians, indeed, form an exception, to whom, in 867, Adrian II. gave per- 
mission to have mass celebrated in the Sclavonic, but he himself recall- 
ed this faculty, which was again given to them by his successor, and 
again recalled in the eleventh century by Alexander I]. ‘The only an- 
swer that the Duke of Bohemia could obtain on this head from Gregory 
VII. who had a deep conviction of the necessity of the ancient discip- 
line, was this—‘‘ Scias nos huic petitioni tue nequaquam satisfacere 
posse.’ In fact, had this most important law of discipline been abro- 
gated, a wide field would have been opened to innovators in matters of 
faith—for the living languages, in consequence of the natural disposition 
of men to be esteemed great and distinguished, are liable to constant 
mutations—and therefore, it would have been necessary to translate the 
liturgy as often as languages changed. ‘There would be as many ver- 
sions as tongues and dialects; so that there would be no end of making 
liturgies, and the doctrines of faith, at the mercy of human vanity, could 


* Vide Digressio Historic. ii. in Chron. S. Monast. Casinens, cap. 32. 
t Recherches de la France, lib. viii. 12. + Etudes sur |’Ecriture de l’Egypte. 


368 MORES CATHOLIC; oR, 


no longer be preserved, as in a sacred asylum, under the faithful key of 
the ancient language. 

Besides this we must remark that, in the ages of faith, men were not 
children in philosophy ; they had drawn for themselves the proper infer- 
ence from the fact remarked by Clemens Alexandrinus, when speaking 
of ‘*the first and generative languages, which,” saith he, ‘are barba- 
rous, but supplied with names from nature ;” he observes, *‘ and men 
confess that prayers delivered in a barbarous—that is, in a tongue differ- 
ent from their own—are more Impressive ; xai ras ebyds dpmoroyorow of 
GvSpwrtor Svvarwrépas scvar Tas BapBape porn rsyouévas.”’* Certainly there 
was no reason why theologians, in reference to the use of things divine, 
should not possess the same advantage as was proved to be so condu- 
cive to the good of poets with the Greeks and Latins, who had a dis- 
tinct language by which they could convey the most familiar things in 
terms intelligible to all, and yet wholly different from those under which 
they might be associated with vulgar or unworthy ideas, from being in 
common use. ‘This usage did not contradict the maxim, that it was the 
simple and ignorant who were capable of the highest prayer: for, as St. 
Thomas and St. Bonaventura distinguish the three modes of attention to 
the divine offices, the first consisting in the material pronunciation of 
the words—the second in their literal sense—the third in their mystic 
sense, which is God: the first, which relates to the words, belonging 
not to the simpler sort, who are ignorant of Latin ; the second, which 
relates to the sense, regarding theologians and learned men; the third, 
which relates to the affections, belonging to monks and men of devout 
life, although they may be void of letters; it follows that incompetency 
with regard to the first, which is called the material, and even a less de- 
gree of knowledge respecting the second, which is termed the formal, 
diminishes not the perfection of those who possess the third, which is 
the final attention, constituting the piety of the religious and the poor.t 
Pure prayer, as Hugo of St. Victor defines it, is when the mind, from 
the abundance of devotion, is so inflamed with love, that when it suppli- 
cates God, it forgets the precise object of its desire.t 

Unction, again, no less incommunicable than authority, is the dis- 
tinctive character of the prayers of the Catholic Church. ‘This impres- 
sive quality can be felt; it can never be defined. It is the ravishing ex- 
pression of a filial confidence; it is the work of the spirit of love, which 
prays in the Church by ineffable groans. It is the result of order and 
peace; it is the echo of a soul, of which all the faculties are held in ac- 
cordance by obedience. ‘The words of the Roman liturgy, besides that 
they are the expression of the vows of the Church, which is holy, are 
also the words of saints, of men capable of finishing the hymn begun by 
angels. ‘These texts chosen in Scripture to edify piety, have been se- 
lected by humble, and innocent, and fervid souls, accustomed to find in 
them the sweetest nourishment. These mysterious words, which they 
have given us from their own fund, breathe still the faith and the can- 
dour of pastages. In general, the deeper we search, the more we shall 


* Stromat. lib. ic. 21. 
+ S. Thom. 2. 2. 9. 85, art. 13. S. Bonav. lib. vii. de Process. Relig. c. 3. 
t De Medo Orandi Libellus, cap. 2. 


AGES OF FAITH. 369 


be convinced that there is a profound reason for every institution of the 
ecclesiastical order. ‘True, the Church offices, in the solemn antiquity 
and symbolism of their language, may have presented difficulties ; but 
these are greatly exaggerated by the moderns. hey were such as 
might be easily overcome where desire was felt; and of them we may 
say, in the words of St. Augustin, speaking of the many and multiplex 
obscurities in the holy Scriptures—that all this was purposely provided 
in order to subdue pride by labour, and to prevent the understanding 
from becoming fastidious, which generally contracts a contempt for 
things of easy investigation: for, as Pellico justly observes, ‘ Exquis- 
ite sentiments, whether of art or of morals, are only acquired by a dili- 
gent will, and by assiduous efforts.’’* 

Men babble now of the necessity of having prayer composed in lan- 
guage more refined; but as De Maistre remarks, ‘the beauty of prayer 
has nothing in common with that of expression, for prayer is like the 
mysterious daughter of the great king, ‘omnis gloria filie regis ab in- 
tus.’ It is something without a name, but which is perfectly percepti- 
ble, and which mere talent alone can never imitate.’”’ Perhaps one 
might affirm with justice, that a studied expression would distract and 
misdirect the attention; at least, there are many who might cite the 
words of the ancient critic in reference to the style of Cato and the Grac- 
chi, and say in allusion to themselves, *‘ veterem illum horrorem dicendi 
malim quam istam novam licentiam.’’+ But yet on the other hand, where 
shall we find, in the true sense of the term, grace of composition, if it 
be not discernible in the voice of the Church? What skills it to study 
harmony of words if there be not the soul stirring might of poesy ? 

“ Ah, that piece of song, 
That old and antique song, methought it did relieve my 


Heart much more than light airs, and recollected terms 
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.” 


That frequent repetition of uniform syllables and the sound of these 
terrible finals in the ancient pieces, when sustained by the majestic gra- 
vity of the Gregorian chaunt, possessed a great empire over minds. 
Cicero remarks the grandeur of many monotonous finals in a verse, and 
adds, ‘« Preclarum carmen! est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugu- 
bre.” The lines which he thus eulogises might be passed on a mod- 
ern reader for a monkish composition. 

“‘ Hee omnia vidi inflammari, 


Priamo vi vitam evitari, 
Jovis aram sanguine turpari.”’t 


Those archaisms too or antiquated forms of expression abounding in 
the Vulgate, which are elsewhere only met in writers anterior to the 
Augustan age, were rather a beauty than a defect in the divine offices. 
The introduction of words, also new to the Latin tongue, but required 
by the doctrines of faith, was another feature calculated to awaken noble 
and devout thoughts. Vivifico is a word not used by profane writers. 
St. Jerome was driven to the necessity of often adopting it, as the idea of 
giving or restoring life is so essentially Christian, that no heathen could 


i a 


* Dei Doveri Degli Uomini, cap. 12. ¢ Quintill. lib. viii. 5. + Tuscul. iii. 5. 
Vot. I1.—47 


* 


3°70 MORES CATHOLICTI; oR, 


have been found to express it. The classic authors would themselves 
defend this usage on principles of common sense, for, as Cicero says, 
‘‘logicians, physicians, geometers, musicians, and grammarians, speak 
after their own manner, and use peculiar words. Not even common 
workmen can retain their arts without using words unknown to us, 
but in use with themselves. ‘Quo magis hoc philosopho faciendum est, 
Ars est enim philosophia vite ; de qua disserens arripere verba de foro 
non potest.’ ”’* Zeno himself was an inventor rather of new words than 
of new things. If this was permitted to Zeno, why not to St. Jerome? 
‘‘Sunt enim rebus novis nova ponenda nomina,”’ says Cicero, citing the 
example of Epicurus himself, who called xpéanju what before him no 
one had ever named by that word.t' The celebrated lexicographer, 
Gesner, used to say, that he considered the Vulgate as a classical work, 
since it enabled him to survey the Latin language in its full extent. But 
even if no such titles were available, men should learn, as St. Augustin 
says, that ‘it is not the voice but the affection of mind which reaches 
to the ears of God. Therefore, they ought not be disposed to laugh, if 
they should hear God invoked with barbarisms or solecisms, for though 
it is by a tone in the forum, it is by a vow in the Church that they are 
blessed. ‘ Itaque forensis illa nonnumquam forte bona dictio, numquam 
tamen benedictio dici potest.’ Of the sacrament which they are about 
to receive, it is sufficient to the more prudent to hear the meaning, but 
with minds of slower apprehension, it is necessary to employ more 
words and similitudes, lest they should despise what they behold.”’ ‘The 
high antiquity of the Roman offices may be seen also in these responses 
and anthems composed of words from the ancient Vulgate, whose reli- 
gious and apostolic simplicity is long anterior to the age of St. Jerome; 
in that division of the Psalms traced by this great doctor at the desire 
of Pope Damasus, after the ancient usage which recalls the vigils of the 
first Christians,—in the mysterious, profound, and inimitable style of 
the collects, and other deprecatory formula; in those hymns, composed 
by a great bishop in the Ambrosian Basilica to occupy a faithful people 
while besieged by a furious princess; in those hymns of Prudentius, Se- 
dulius, Gregory, and Hilary, of an Innocent and a Thomas Aquinas. 
In truth, I should never finish were I to trace, in reference to antiqua- 
rian lore, all the grandeur and interest of the Roman Liturgy. Shall I 
speak of the sublime chaunts which have come down to us along with 
these admirable prayers? I might call to witness even Protestant au- 
thors, in whose ears thy have never sounded without causing to vibrate the 
vatholic chord. Who has not felt the charm of these sublime passages 
imprinted with the genius of ages that are no more, and that have left no 
other vestige behind them? Who has not shuddered at the simple, plain 
chaunt of the office of the dead when the tender and the terrible are so 
admirably blended? What Christian has ever heard the paschal chaunt 
of «* Hee dies,’ without a sentiment of infinity, or the **O filii et filiw,” 
without feeling his heart inflamed with a more tender love for the chil- 
dren of men? Who has ever heard on the festivals of the Assumption 
and of All Saints, a whole people making the holy vaults resound with 
the inspired accents of the Gaudeamus without feeling himself carried 
Se eT Oe a ee 
* De Finibus, lib. iii, + De Nat. Deorum, lib.i. 


AGES OF FAITH. 371 


back, through the lapse of ages, to the time when the echoes of subter- 
raneous Rome repeated this triumphal chaunt, while the empire was 
hastening to its end, and the Church commencing its eternal destinies ? * 

But not only was Latin the language of the Church, symbolical too in 
the highest sense was the expression of her desires, so that in proposing 
her liturgy as an object of literary and philosophic study, one might say 
each moment in the words of Dante, 

‘* Ye of intellect 


Sound and entire, mark well the lore conceal’d 
Under close texture of the mystic strain.’”’} 


The origin of this whole discipline must be sought for in the very 
nature of things, for as a German philosopher observes, ‘all thought- 
communication of men upon religious truth must, in its affirmative ex- 
pression, be figurative and exhibited in symbols.” { Angels behold spi- 
ritual things by means of divine illumination, but to mortal eyes they 
can only be presented through the medium of sensible symbols. ‘The 
language of the Church in this respect meets us still in every depart- 
ment of the arts, where it is often not comprehended ; for it was in con- 
formity with it that painters and sculptors employed those lilies, peli- 
cans, stags, and other objects of visible nature to signify spiritual and 
invisible things. ‘The creature as well as Scripture being, as Hugo of 
St. Victor saith, the book of God to recall man to the true and immuta- 
ble good.|| How naturally and unavoidably the Church inclined to this 
usage will be obvious at once, if we bear in mind the practice of the 
Holy Scripture, and above all the example of our Lord, the fact of 
whose profound parables should put to silence the rash objectors who 
would blame the Church, without considering that the symbol is the 
same whether it consist in words or in visible objects. Who need be 
told that the judgment of the wise in all ages has sanctioned the use of 
symbols? Clemens Alexandrinus§ relates that Hipparchus, the Pytha- 
gorean, was expelled from the school, because he had openly written 
down the precepts of the Master; and that they placed a column to him 
as to a person that was dead. ‘The wise ancients saw the necessity of 
using allegory and figure in the expression of sublime truth. Gregory 
Nazianzen says, that the sacred mysteries are not to be explained before 
the base, according to the principle expressed by Sallust, the philoso- 
pher, that to hide truth in fables, prevents the foolish from despising, 
and compels the studious to philosophize,** for which reason it was that 
the Egyptians placed sphynxes at the entrance of their temples. But let 
us remark the difference between the figures of the ancient sanctuaries 
and those of the Catholic temple. In the former, the symbol which 
conveyed truth only to a few of the initiated, gave birth to the grossest 
idolatry with the rest of men; whereas the Church, on the contrary, 
commences with a verbal and authoritative promulgation, and only after 
that clothes the mysteries which it has announced in sensible forms, as 
an earthly refraction of the heavenly light, accommodated to the neces- 


* Le Mémorial Catholique, i. 2. ft Infer. c. 9. 
+ Fries Religios Philosophie und Philosophischen Aisthetik. 
| Institut. Monastic Sermo viii. § Strom. lib. v. 


** Lib. de Diis et Mundo, cap. 3. 


372 MORES CATHOLICI; or, 


sities of her children. The Christian use of mystic words date from the 
very cradle of the Church. «The use of symbolic language,” says 
Clemens Alexandrinus, ‘is most useful for many things; it is conducive 
to right theology, to piety, to the exercise of understanding, to brevity 
of speech, and it is an argument of wisdom.”* He remarks, that the 
style of the old Greek as well as that of the Hebrew philosophy was 
enigmatical, for that brevity of expression was studied as most useful 
and persuasive. He shows that the prophets made use of enigmas, and 
that the mysteries were not shown clearly to all men alike, but only 
after certain purifications and previous instruction. ‘In a word,” he 
Says, ‘all theologians, both barbarians and Greeks, concealed the prin- 
ciples of things, and delivered truth through enigmas and symbols, in 
allegories and metaphors, and such tropes. Nay, even the wise men 
of the Greeks conveyed their lessons in short words and apophthegms, 
such as yycS. cavedy and the like. The poets also, teaching the theolo- 
gy of the prophets, philosophize by means of allegory, as did Orpheus, 
and Linus, Museus, Homer, Hesiod, and other wise men of that class, 
more obscurely conveying truths in dreams and symbols, not through 
envy, but that by means of searching out the sense of the enigma, men 
might be more enticed to the discovery of truth. In the same manner,” 
he remarks, ‘we are instructed in the Psalms and in the prophets, 
where the Lord opens his mouth in parables ; + and by the apostles who 
speak wisdom to the initiated, the wisdom of God in a mystery which 
the princes of this world knew not.” « Sapientes abscondunt scienti- 
am,’’ says Solomon, in order that the mocker may seek wisdom and 
not find it;+ for the first essential qualification for understanding sym- 
bolic language is a revering spirit. All ancient wisdom certainly recog- 
nized the importance of symbolic instruction. The Pythagorean sym- 
bols were celebrated in the philosophy of the barbarians, such as ‘keep 
no swallows in your house,” that is, have no talker or busy body, and 
smooth down your bed when you rise from it, that is, extirpate every 
vestige of passion. In fact, the symbolic mode of teaching by enigmas 
was characteristic of the whole Pythagoric institution.|| Idanthuras, the 
Scythian king, as Phercydes the Syrian relates, replied to Darius by a 
symbol instead of by words.§ Androcydes, the Pythagorean, describes 
the letters called Ephesian, as consisting of symbols and obscure expres- 
sions, as for instance, darkness is called aoxvov, from having no shadow, 
and light xardoxcov, since it involves a shadow; vezpas, is the year, 
from its having four seasons, and Sv was the air, as being (uddwpor.** 
The stoics say that Zeno, in order to prove the vocation of his disciples, 
wrote his first instructions in such an obscure manner that it was hard 
to understand them. In like manner, the writings of Aristotle were 
twofold, ra éowrepexd for his initiated, and 7a éSwcrepexa for the vulgar 
without, and the former were unintelligible to common men. 

What is mysticism? what must be mystically reviewed? Religion, 
love, nature, and state. The church offices were composed of symbols, 
and as an ascetic writer remarks, ‘‘nisi omnia referantur ad laudem Cre- 
atoris, inanis est omnis visio videntium.’’{t  « Every thing in the Church 


SaAGRAGAMRSTRET TOR LATE ecard e De TRE RODE PINE cue OS 


* Stromat. v. 8. tT Isa. Ixv. 3. + Parab. x. || Jamblich. 34, 
§ Stromat. v. 7. Ph ev B, t+ Thom. a Kemp. Hortulus Rosarum. 


AGES OF FAITH. 373 


is full of divine signification and mystery,” says Durandus. ‘ Every 
thing in it abounds in celestial sweets, when one knows how to look at 
it, when one knows how to draw the honey from the stone, and the oil 
from the hardest flint. Who can enable us to do this? Lord, the well 
is deep, and I have no vessel wherewith to draw the water! It is for 
the priests, the dispensers of the mysteries, to comprehend and reveal 
them to others.’? ‘lo condemn the use of symbolic instruction as un- 
worthy of an age of the highest intelligence, would indicate a total igno- 
rance of the general law and construction of human minds, since what- 
ever be the method of instruction adopted, the fact which Dante remarks 
is incontrovertible, that 
** from things sensible alone ye learn 


That, which, digested rightly, after turns 
To intellectual.’’* ' 


It should be observed, moreover, that the spirit of the middle ages 
was peculiarly favourable to this method, so that the symbols adopted 
in the ritual of the Church, must have then possessed extraordinary 
charms in the estimation of all ranks of society. No object or occasion 
seemed too trifling to furnish matter for the exercise of their disposition 
to view things in the light of symbols. Ives, of Chartres, receiving a 
comb as a present from his dear friend Gerard, in reply to him, inter- 
prets it as an emblem which can teach him the duties of his episcopal 
office.t ‘The laity evince the same inclination: men that were not all 
tongue, but deeds and truth, would thus in the common intercourse of 
life, in dumb significants proclaim their thoughts, and, as Shakspeare 
witnesseth in the Temple garden, give, in the plucking of a red rose or 
a white, an answer to the summons of Plantagenet. Dom Claude de 
Vert, a learned Benedictine, in his work upon the ceremonies of the 
Church, offered a simple and natural explanation of most of them. Lan- 
guet, Archbishop of Sens, published a reply, and assigned to them a 
wholly symbolical origin. Both of these views no doubt were just. 
As Duns Scotus remarks of the sacred Scriptures, the divine offices of 
the Catholic Church had a literal and a spiritual or mystic sense, which 
last, in three-fold division, was either allegorical, tropological, or anago- 
gical, referring either to what was to be believed, performed, or hoped, 
and sometimes one sign or word, like that of the cross, or the name Je- 
rusalem comprised all—a literal sense, signifying an event or a city, a 
tropological, denoting trust and sanctity, an allegorical, denoting the 
Church militant, and an anagogical, signifying the triumphant Church.t{ 
No one who loves to study the doctrine of perception, in reference to 
the beauties of poetry and art, can be insensible to the care evinced by 
the Church, to press into her service every thing which can bring unity 
into a visible form; and, indeed, the great charm and might of poetry 
over human life, is never more fully felt than when it employs conse- 
crated figures and symbols to express the mystery of our existence in 
the world of wishes, and the ideas of anticipation which console it. 
That the symbolic sense was intended in the ceremonies of faith, is 
proved from the ancient fathers. ‘Thus St. Ambrose says to the Neo- 


*§Parad. iv. 41. + Tvonis Carnotens. Epist. vii + Duns Scoti Miscellan. ix. 6. 


2G 


374 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


phytes, who have been just initiated by baptism into the Christian 
mysteries, ‘¢ Recollect what you have done, what you have seen. You 
have seen the Levite, you have seen the priest, you have seen the 
high-priest. Consider not the figures of bodies, but the grace of 
mysteries. You have spoken in the presence of angels, for he is an 
angel who announces the kingdom of Christ and eternal life. Es- 
teem him not by the appearance, but by the gift. Consider the an- 
cient mystery of the holy rites. Do not believe only your bodily eyes, 
for what is seen is temporal, but what is perceived only by the mind 
is eternal; and do not regard the merit of the persons, but the office 
of the priests. Believe that Jesus our Lord was present, by reason of 
devout prayer, and the celebration of his mysteries. In the washing 
of the feet recognize, that the mystery itself consists in the ministration 
of humility ; in the white robe, and the unction, and the cutting off of 
the hair, and in all the rites, observe how beautiful is the Church, and 
how she desires to arrive at the interior mystery, and to consecrate all 
the sense to Christ. You have seen the most holy altar composed, and 
the people approaching to it. Remember that the sacraments of the 
Church are more ancient than those of the Synagogue, and more excel- 
lent than the manna; for there is the offering of a priest for ever, and that 
which you have received is the bread of angels, the very body of Christ. 
For here there is no order of nature, where there is excellence of grace. 
You have seen, therefore, the mysteries of the Church, which is said 
to be an enclosed garden, a sealed fountain, to signify that the mystery 
ought to remain sealed with you, that it may not be broken by the deeds 
of an evil life, or divulged to improper persons, or disclosed to the per- 
fidious by garrulous loquacity, but that it should be placed under the 
protection of faith, and of a holy life and silence.”* St. Thomas says, 
that it is on account of the war which the ancient enemy always makes 
against those who are at prayer, that the Church, directed by the Holy 
Ghost, begins all the canonical hours with “ Deus, in adjutorium meum 
intende,”’ a custom of immemorial usage. At matins, this is preceded 
with the verse, ‘** Domine, labia mea aperies,’” because after complins 
the preceding evening the lips had been closed, and therefore in begin- 
ning the nocturnal office, this prayer was added, that God would vouch- 
safe to open the lips of his servant to praise his name. Amalarius 
shows the origin of the antiphons and the double chorus of the Church 
offices. ‘The antiphon, which refers to love, is alternately sung by the 
two sides of the choir, because charity cannot exist where there are not 
at least two to respond. ‘That charity, therefore, may be perfect, it was 
necessary that there should be one to whom the other might exhibit its 
affection. ‘Therefore the psalms are sung with alternate modulation to 
evince mutual love. In vain he prepares to sing the psalm who does 
not join to it the antiphon of love. On the more solemn festivals, the 
antiphon is double, to show that love ought then to be more perfect. In 
others, the beginning of the psalm is imperfectly announced, and at the 
end it is completed, because, as Hugo of St. Victor says, ‘Charity 
begun in this life is to be consummated in the end. ‘The chanter alone 
begins the antiphon, which is then finished by all, because charity from 


* De iis qui mysteriis initiantur, lib. 


AGES OF FAITH. B75 


-one Christ is diffused into all the members. After the psalms all in 
common joy sing the antiphon, because common joy springs from com- 
mon charity.”? On the use of the Allelujah, Hugo of St. Victor says, 
‘‘Here neither words nor understanding suffice, and yet love will not 
admit of silence. Therefore, the Church by thus uttering sound— 
pneumatizing—indicates admirably, with more expression, and in a bet- 
ter manner without words, than it could by means of words, what is the 
joy of God where words shall cease. For by this sound, though we do 
not describe what it is to feel eternal joy, at least, we show that it is in- 
describable. And since the praises of eternal life will not resound in 
human words, the sequences are sometimes mystically sounded forth 
without words; for no signification of words is necessary where the 
hearts of all will be laid open to all beholding the book of life.”’* The 
Rubrics preseribed that the number of the collects should be always 
uneven, for the Church desires unity and conjunction, which is expressed 
by an uneven number, which, as it cannot be cut into equal parts, pre- 
serves its integrity.t ‘The credo is repeated in some of the offices, partly 
in secret, and partly aloud, to show, as Cardinal Bona says, that «* Corde 
creditur ad justitiam, ore autem confessio fit ad salutem.’”’ St. Edmund, 
the Cistercian monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his Mirror of the 
Church, seemed to reprehend all prayers but the divine form taught by 
our Lord, which was in fact the universal prayer of the middle ages, as 
Dionysius the Carthusian observes.t But Cardinal Bona shows the 
necessity of attending to his real meaning, lest we should conclude that 
he actually did intend to condemn all other forms according to the her- 
esy of Basil.|| Hugo of St. Victor, indeed, shows that the several peti- 
tions contained in this divine prayer, correspond to the graces which 
qualify men for beatitude, since their fulfilment would render men poor 
in spirit to hallow the name of God, meek to inherit his kingdom, 
mourners, from the repentance attached to that knowledge produced by 
submission to his will, hungry and thirsty after justice, seeking from 
heaven their daily bread, merciful, from a consideration of their own 
trespasses, clean of heart, being freed from temptation to the vices which 
obscure the intelligence, and children of peace, in consequence of being 
delivered from evil.§ The Church also uses a certain language of im- 
passioned piety borrowed from the mystic Scriptures, which Richard of 
St. Victor thus proceeds to explain. ‘‘ Reason and affection,” saith he, 
‘have both their hand-maidens, imagination and sensuality. So much 
is each necessary to its own mistress, that without them the whole world 
itself could confer nothing upon them, for without imagination reason 
would know nothing, and without sensuality, affection would taste noth- 
ing.”’** «+ Osculetur me osculo oris sui. Fulcite me floribus, stipate me 
malis, quia amore langueo. Favus distillans labia tua, mel et lac sub 
lingua tua.’’? ‘* What, I pray,”’ asks this devout contemplatist, ‘*can be 
sweeter than these words? What can be more agreeable? What lan- 


* Hugo de Sanct. Victor, Speculum de Mysteriis Ecclesie, cap. 7. 
t Bened. XIV. de Sacrificio Misse, i. 110. t De Judic. Anim. xxxviii. 
| Yet a late writer in the Quarterly Review accuses him of a superstitious fondness 
for formule of prayers ! 
§ In Speculum de Mysteriis Ecclesie, cap. 7. 
** De Preparatione Animi ad Contemplationem, cap. 5. 


376 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


guage would be heard more willingly, more greedily ? These words 
seem to sound something carnal, and yet they are spiritual things which 
are described by them. ‘Thus Nephtalim knows how to mix carnal 
with spiritual things, and to describe incorporeal by bodily things; so 
that the two-fold nature of man finds in his discourse whence he can 
admirably refresh himself, consisting as he does of a bodily and of an 
incorporeal nature. Hence it is that these things sound so sweet to 
man.’’* But in order to understand this point more fully, let us again 
hear Richard. «After the human race,” saith he, ‘had been expelled 
from the joys of Paradise, entering on the journey of the present life, it 
had a blind heart, to which, if it had been said by a human voice, follow 
God, or love God, as is said in the law, once sent out and cold with the 
torpor of infidelity, it would not understand what it heard. Therefore, 
by certain enigmas, the divine word speaks to the torpid and frigid soul, 
and by the things which it knoweth secretly, does it insinuate into it 
the love which it knoweth not. For allegory to a soul placed far from 
God, is, as it were, a certain machine, by which it may be raised to God, 
by means of interspersed enigmas, while something which it knows in 
words of its own, it understands in the sense of words which is not of its 
own, and by earthly words it is separated from the earth, for knowing ex- 
terior words it comes to understand interior. Hence in the book of the 
song of songs, words of corporeal love are employed, that from the hody 
the soul may be warmed, and led to the love which is spiritual: in which 
words the holy Scripture is not to be ridiculed, but rather the greater mer- 
cy of God is to be considered. For it is to be remarked, how wondrously 
and mercifully it deals with us in this condescension. We ought, there- 
fore, in these corporeal words to seek what is interior, and as if to leave 
the body. We ought to this marriage of the spouse to come with the un- 
derstanding of intimate charity, that is, with the nuptial vest, with which 
if we are not clothed we shall be driven away to eternal darkness and 
the blindness of ignorance. We ought by these words of passion to pass 
to the virtue of impassibility, for the holy Scripture in its words is like a 
picture in its colours, and he is foolish indeed, who so adheres to the 
colours as to be ignorant of the thing which is painted.’’t 

But it was not in words alone that the enigmatical expression of the 
Church was conveyed. Her ceremonies also were high symbols, de- 
monstrating things of which the mystic sense and invisible truth are 
known by divine illumination to the angelic spirits. Philosophers and 
poets will find no works more rich in profound and beautiful thoughts 
than those which are designed to develope and explain the ecclesiastical 
symbols, written during the middle ages by such men as Hugo and 
Richard of St. Victor, Durandus,{ Duranti,| Remy of Auxerre,§ Honoré 
St. Autun,** St. Bruno of Asti,tt Martene,{t and many others. The 
symbolic sense of the holy vestments worn by her priests was seen in 
the sublime prayers which they repeated as they clothed themselves to 
minister at the altar.||| A long sermon of Ives de Chartres is devoted 


* De Preparatione Animi ad Contemplationem, cap. 24. 

t Richard. Victorin. in Cantica Canticorum Prolog. { Rationale Divin. Offic. 

| De Ritibus Eccles. Cath. § Tractat. de Dedic. Eccles. 
** Gemma Anime. +t De Sacramentis Eccles. Myst. atque Eccles, Ritibus. 
tt De Antiq. Eccles. Ritibus. ||| Benedict XIV. de Sacrificio Misse, § 1. 54—62. 


AGES OF FAITH. 377 


to explaining, for the edification of manners, the mystic beauty of the 
priest’s vestment, in which every part had a divine meaning. ‘+ Wit- 
ness,’’ says Walafried Strabo, ‘* that alb denoting purity, that belt signi- 
fying continence, that stole obedience, and that flowing chasuble, which 
is placed over all, to denote charity, the greatest of all virtues.”’** The 
gloves of the bishop were put on to signify that his good works were 
sometimes to be in secret and not before men; and they were laid aside, 
to remind him that his light was to shine before men.t The mystic 
sense of the pallium, symbol of unanimity, as Pope Symmachus styles 
it, writing to a bishop of Austria, in the year 504,{ and which ancient 
authors mention as being taken from the body of St. Peter, that is to 
say, from the altar over his relics, and to which they ascribe the pleni- 
tude of the pontificial office,|| is explained by Isidorus Pelusiota, in his 
epistle to Count Herminius. ‘The bishop,” he says, ‘* wears upon his 
shoulders a band, not of linen but of wool, to signify that he is an imi- 
tator of Christ, the great Shepherd who carried on his shoulders the 
sheep which he had lost and found.” In the same manner Simeon 
Gretserus interprets the omophorium.§ ‘The procession is the way to 
the celestial country. ‘* He who ministers to others the light of good 
works is spiritually an acolyte,” says Hugo of St. Victor.** Many 
usages and institutions will be unintelligible if we do not bear in mind 
their spiritual interpretation. Why, for example, was a church to be 
consecrated afresh if the altar had been moved, but only its walls wash- 
ed with salt if the other parts of the building had been repaired after 
having fallen? Ives de Chartres explains this, by showing, that as the 
altar signified faith, its removal signified a loss of faith, which could only 
be repaired by a fresh reception of sacred mysteries ; but the rest of the 
edifice when injured and repaired, was only to be washed with salt, to 
show that by tears and penance other sins were to be purged away. 
Thus, as he says, ‘* whatever was done in the temple made with hands 
signified what ought to be done spiritually within us, that by the observ- 
ance of visible sacraments we might be led to the knowledge and love 
of the invisible building.”’tt It may be remarked generally, that the 
Church had nothing for mere ornament, but, like Nature, all her rites 
had regard to use as well as beauty. She loved symbols that were 
beautiful, but no unmeaning decorations. It is observable also, that a 
vast number of loving harmonies and sweet incidents, fruitful in sublime, 
poetical, and religious emotions, were produced by keeping this in mind, 
and doing things in consequence simply and spiritually, without attend- 
ing to the part which was material, without any regard to formality, or 
fancied decorum, but just as the bare need of the occasion required. 
As yet we have taken but a very cursory glance at the divine offices, 
and already we can perceive with what solemn majesty they were cloth- 
ed, and how well they corresponded to that sentiment of beauty, under 
the religious feeling, which, in the unity of our life of perception, di- 
vides itself into the epic of inspiration, the dramatic of resignation, and 
the lyric of devotion. O how the soul is moved at that solemn har- 


$e a eee ee a eee eS ee 


* De Ecclesiasticis Officiis, lib. i. ¢ Id. cap. 55. t Germania Sacra, i. 7. 
|| Sicilia Sacra, i. 41, § In Codinum, lib, i. c. 1. 
** Speculum de Mysteriis Ecclesie, cap. 1. Tf Ivonis Carnot. Epist. Ixxx. 


378 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


mony of holy song, at that anthem chaunted by a hundred voices, recur- 
ring with such irresistible precision, and with as much certainty as if 
ordained by some law of nature, at that instant rising of the tall lights, 
when the still sweet tones of the saintly orison solitarily ascends. So 
have I found it under the noble dome of Florence, where, on one side, 
stood the portrait of Dante, and in the centre the last work of Michael 
Angelo, the dead Christ in the arms of his mother,—sublime master- 
piece! which death prevented him from finishing. ‘* Omnes sitientes, 
venite ad aquas.’’ ‘he Church had many secrets to minister refresh- 
ment to the parched and fainting soul. Her silence had words—for, 
as St. Ambrose says, ** Non solos Dominus audit loquentes qui audiebat 
Moysen tacentem. Plus audit tacitas cogitationes morum quam voces 
omnium.’’* What rapture in that lofty, that deep, that sweet, that di- 
vine silence, in which all injuries are forgotten—that admirable silence, 
as much superior to all harmony as the Divine darkness is more lumi- 
nous than the sun and every other light in heaven,t yielding at length 
only to that majestic voice, which comes to our ears, after the lapse of 
ages, through Moses, the rapt prophets, the Psalms and Gospel ; and. 
which, like the voice of God himself, ‘* breaks the proud cedars, and 
makes the deserts tremble.”’{ ‘The divine office was not a mere rise 
and fall of organ sound, swelling and dying away under the Gothic 
arches, and causing solemn reverberations like those mountain echoes, 
which produce such a pleasing astonishment in the admirers of nature, 
who make journeys to hear waterfalls, or cannon fired under hanging 
rocks. In the Catholic Church, the divine office was a provision, not 
for the vague raptures of a wandering mind, but for the wants of the 
understanding, and, through the intelligence, for the necessities of the 
heart. At the farthest extremity of her vast temples, through the long 
and lofty aisles, the words of the psalm, of the antiphon, or the hymn, 
came to the ear loud and distinct :—and certainly, no harmony of instru- 
ments could equal the effect produced by that unearthly light of words 
which issued from the sanctuary. How solemn, on entering beneath » 
Ogygean vaults, to hear the loud solitary voice entoning from the choir, 
the first verse of a psalm—* Nisi Dominus edificaverit domum ”’—which 
is then caught up by a multitude, in which laymen’s voices mingle with 
the priests’, eager to complete that sublime announcement. 

Sometimes the Church, in her affliction, appears like a person become 
insensible through excess of sorrow, and reduced to a state in which the 
soul wishes to forget every thing but the counsels of eternal wisdom— 
as where she sings the tenebre, and suddenly interrupts the chant of 
her particular sorrow, to break forth in that exclamation, expressing a 
general thought—* Blessed is the man who hath borne the yoke from 
his youth.’? What terrible sadness in those tones and words of the 
matins on Maunday Thursday—Melius illi erat, si natus non fuisset ?”’ 
How awful and impressive are those tearful or joyful fragments which 
she is continually singing—the beauty of which was so keenly felt by 
Dante, as appears from his so often introducing a similar usage into his 
divine vision, like that prophet who begins with a conjunction, to whom 
were present those things which seem absent to our ignorance, and in 


i MO ace eee es ne ag tt as Nt ee a as Nt 


* Lib. Offic. i. 41. + T'asso, Dialoghi ovvero della Pace. { Psalm, xxiii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 379 


whose mind interior and exterior things were so conjoined, as if he be- 
held both at the same time, so that his words were only a continuance 
of his inward thought. At one time you hear a voice saying, ‘¢ Martinus 
adhuc catechumenus hac me veste contexit;’’ at another, ‘* Sancti mei, 
qui in carne positi certamen habuistis ;”’ at another, ** Media nocte cla- 
mor factus est ;’’ at another, ‘* Mea nox obscurum non habet, sed omnia 
in luce clarescunt :’’ and all the while there is on every side acrying, 


‘* Blessed Mary! pray for us. 
Michael and Peter! all ye saintly host.’* 


How conformable to the most intimate emotions of the human heart, 
is that frequent repetition of solemn and suppliant words, round which 
the mind seems desirous of lingering, as if it could not be torn away 
from them. Without recurring to the repetitions which occur in the 
Psalms, and in other parts of holy Scripture, of which St. Hilary gives 
so profound an explanation, we can witness how true to nature is this 
feature of the liturgy, by referring to the ancient grave tragedians, where 
the chorus, in the Agamemnon of AMschylus, desires Clytemnestra to 
repeat what she has just announced respecting the fall of 'Troy—adding, 
‘‘T should wish to hear those words continually, and to be filled with 
admiration while you repeat them again and again.’’t In the high lyric 
pathetic beauty of the hymns, we feel the true power of poesy; while 
that syllabic composition of song in Pindar’s style imparts a tone of the 
utmost majesty to the triumphs of the poor. Some of the antiphons 
contain the last words of martyrs in their agony; others the memorable 
exclamations of confessors before kings; others the sentences of holy 
doctors, and the replies of saints, on occasions that are transmitted in the 
archives of history to everlasting renown. Such are those words, sung 
on the festival of St. Laurence—* Quo progrederis sine filio, Pater? 
Quo, sacerdos sancte, sine ministro properas?’’ Will you hear how the 
vilest instrument of torture can be made sublime by the confession of 
amartyr? Hear that fearful cry of the Church on the same great day 
—‘‘In craticula te Deum non negavi, et ad ignem applicatus te Chris- 
tum confessus sum.’’ How impressive are those anthems, sung on the 
festival of the great advocate of Gaul—* Dixerunt discipuli ad beatum 
Martinum, cur nos, Pater, deseris?’’ and that—‘* Domine, si adhuc po- 
pulo ;’,—those sung on St. Andrew’s day, ‘*O bona crux, que decorem 
et pulchritudinem de membris Domini suscepisti ;’’ those on the feast of 
St. Clement, ‘‘Omnes una voce dixerunt: ora pro nobis, sancte Cle- 
mens :”’ those on St. Agatha’s day, ‘* Quis es tu qui venisti ad me cu- 
rare vulnera mea? Ego sum Apostolus Christi,’’ and those on St. Ce- 
cilia’s day, which relate the visit of Valerianus to the catacombs on the 
Appian way, in search of St. Urban, who was there concealed? ‘The 
antiphons on the festival of St. Lucia, at vespers, and in the office of the 
night and at lauds, bring us in presence of scenes so pathetic, so ineffa- 
bly sweet and sad, that a youthful mind can make no comment upon 
them, unless by weeping. ‘In tua patientia possedisti animam tuam, 
Lucia sponsa Christi: odisti que in mundo sunt, et coruscas cum ange- 
lis: sanguine proprio inimicum vicisti.”? Can you hear what is sung 


* Dante, Purg. xiii. f 318. 


380 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


without feeling the fountain of tears flow over? ‘Rogavi Dominum 
meum Jesum Christum, ut ignis iste non dominetur mei.”? Can you 
hear what follows without experiencing that chill which attends the sub- 
lime mysterious consolation? ‘Soror mea Lucia, virgo Deo devota, 
quid & me petis, quod ipsa poteris prestare continuo matri tue? Nam 
et fides tua illi subvenit et ecce salvata est.” Can you hear, lastly, the 
song of triumph without falling upon your knees? «* Benedico te, Pa- 
ter domini mei Jesu Christi. Quia per filium tuum ignis extinctus est 
a latere meo 2”’ 

A modern poet, in his description of the first Christian society, when 
he introduces the evening prayer, can find no words more harmonious 
or noble, amidst his gracious and sublime picture, than those which the 
Church actually uses in her complin office—* Visita, quesumus, Domi- 
ne, habitationem istam :”’ and he observes, that through familiarity ma- 
ny are insensible to the beauty of this prayer. In fact, when any of 
these collects, or the words of some litany, which have a cry for every 
feeling of the heart, are placed by a poet in the midst of the most bril- 
liant passage, there is no transition perceptible, no interruption to the 
beauty and majesty of the style ; but the words of the Church seem the 
genuine effusion of the poet, in his happiest moment of inspiration. 
What majesty in those antique verses murmured by the priest—the 
force of which has been so often felt by hell! Witness those words in 
the office of the dedication, pronounced by the pontiff on first entering 
the Church, while with his crosier he traces the victorious sign upon 
the threshold: ‘*Eece signum crucis, fugiant phantasmata cuncta!’’ 
While many must have felt how the prayers of the Church are compos- 
ed with attention to the sweets of harmonious cadence, there are per- 
haps few at present who remark sufficiently with what accurate preci- 
sion they invariably agree with the most profound truths of philosophy, 
as well as with the mysteries of faith. Political science might be learn- 
ed from her prayers for princes and for all the faithful—as when, amidst 
the joy of the paschal solemnities, she prays that God may enable his 
people to attain to perfect liberty :*—and physiological researches might 
be furthered by a close attention to the words of her various supplica- 
tions. Nor can we overlook the undeviating consistency and the strict 
adherence to definite principles, which characterise all expressions in 
the divine office. Of this, Hugo of St. Victor may supply an instance. 
‘‘The spirit of itself,’’ he says, ‘‘is termed spirit—and in connexion 
with the body it is called soul. The human soul, because it can exist 
both in the body and out of it, is called, in the ecclesiastic offices, soul 
and spirit. ‘Therefore,’’ he says, ‘the holy Church, which believes 
most faithfully in the resurrection of the flesh, prays not only for the 
spirit, but also for the souls of the faithful.’’t 

Well, indeed, on every consideration, may these be styled angelic 
ofices. In the grand painting in the Church of St. Dominick at Bo- 
loona, St. Thomas—himself rather an angel than a man, one of those, 
of whom the whole course of the world’s history can hardly produce 
two or three examples—is represented writing the Lauda Sion from the 
dictation of angels, whose beaming countenances are reflected in his 


* Easter Monday. ¢ Allegor. in Marcum, lib. iii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 381 


looks. Of the hymn, ‘Gloria in excelsis,’’ the writers of the middle 
age simply say, **’This was begun by the angels and finished by doctors 
of the Church.”’—‘* Prima hujus hymni verba e celo ad nos angelorum 
voce derivata sunt,’’ says Cardinal Bona,—*Cetera quis addiderit 
incertum est.’’* 

The origin of the hymn on Palm Sunday, * Gloria, laus, et honor tibi 
sit, rex Christe redemptor,”’ is thus related. **'Theodulph, Bishop of 
Orleans, being falsely accused and imprisoned by the Emperor Lewis, 
son of Charlemagne, in a tower at Angers ; on Palm Sunday, the proces- 
sion passed by the prison, when he, opening his casement and making 
silence, entoned these verses of his own composition. ‘The Emperor, 
who was present, was so pleased, that he ordered him to be released, 
and restored to his see, and from that day these verses were sung in the 
procession.”’t 

Time and words would both fail me if I attempted to point out all the 
beauty and beatific influence of the various forms of devotion practised 
in the Church. Only let the litanies of our Blessed Lady, of Jesus, and 
of the Saints, which are sung in every region of the earth, be recalled to 
memory,—only let it be considered how “they express the feelings with 
which hastening shepherds and adoring kings in Bethany must have 
beheld the virgin mother of the Divine infant,—that the symbolical titles 
given to her in accordance with the usages of sacred Scripture, can 
inspire the loftiest and purest conceptions of grace almighty,—that a 
soul which is enlightened by the Divine intelligence, discovers and feels 
within herself things which can never be expressed except in symbolic 
language,—that the love for Jesus can only dictate short seraphic praises, 
and ardent desires to supplicate his power,—that those adopted in refer- 
ence to Mary, besides their intrinsic beauty, are sanctified by the innu- 
merable holy persons who have used them from age to age, in life and 
death,—how the litany of the saints transports us into the presence 
of all the great and good that have adorned the Church in past time— 
the apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, monks, hermits, virgins, 
widows, and all the saints of God,—how it raises up their image before 
the mind’s eye,—how it carries us into the colosseum of Pagan Rome, 
into the catacombs, into the deserts of 'Thebaid, into the caves of the 
mountains and forests, into the cells of the monasteries of the middle 
age, and finally, into the confines of the ineffable presence of the elect 
in glory !—how, returning to ourselves, it reminds us of every evil to be 
shunned in the passage of mortal life, and of every good to be desired,— 
how it instructs, elevates, and ravishes the soul,—only let this be con- 
sidered, and I think, in a mind most prejudiced with a prejudicating 
humour, these will all be found in excellency fruitful. 

The corrections which some men, in modern times, have proposed in 
the offices, only furnish an additional evidence that they had no profound 
sentiment of religious truth, and that even those few mysteries of faith 
which they profess outwardly, have never been, as with Catholics, 
transfused into their very souls. Such is the necessary inference to be 
drawn from that substitution which was invented of the term Redemptor 
for Regina in the hymn ‘Salve Regina,” for, to no Catholic would 


* Benedict. XIV. Rer. Liturg. lib. ii. cap. 4. ¢ Durand. Rationale, lib. vi. c. 67. 


382 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


such words ever occur in addressing his Redeemer as to say that to him 
he had recourse in the sorrows of his pilgrimage, since he knows at 
least, by faith, that his life should be Christ, and that he should live in 
Christ; but to his blessed mother he turns in sighing and sorrowing in 
this vale of tears. Sooth, when one hears the moderns propose to modify 
or alter what the Church has ordained, one might think it enough to 
answer them in the words of Beatrice to Dante, when she beheld him 
terrified at the shout of spirits in Paradise— 


“ Knowest not thou thou art in heav’n ? 
And knowest not thou, whatever is in heaven 
Is holy ; and that nothing there is done 

But is done zealously and well ?’’* 


One whose lore has been by genius guided may be warmed with some- 
what of Mercutio’s zeal when he hears certain lisping, affecting fantas- 
ticoes, new tuners of accents, fashion-mongers, speaking on such sub- 
jects, as if any fluent phrase-man were competent to correct the liturgy 
of the Catholic Church; and one who is of intelligence profound may 
indulge a smile at their expense; for these pretended clear and exact 
speakers, like Euripides, are sure to be convicted of absolute error when 
they have an Aéschylus for their judge; but the milder and gentler as- 
cetic, to whom piety imparts the privilege of genius without its dangers, 
will be content with observing that prayer, by its very nature, must be 
mysterious, and that they who approach God with ardent devotion, must 
have very different notions of what is fitting language, from others, who, 
with unmoved affections, would draw towards him scientifically with 
their lips alone; consequently, that it is wrong to criticise pieces of this 
kind, since one ought rather to respect them as mystic words which 
comprise a spiritual sense, and which are so many testimonies of the 
sublimity of the state to which their authors were raised. 

The moderns pride themselves on certain studied compositions which 
they seem to consider perfect models of prayer. Certainly no one can 
object to these forms on the ground of their not being sufficiently clear, 
as far as the words themselves are concerned, which are very precise ; 
or of their omissions, for every want that can be conceived is specified ; 
but it may be doubted whether they would have sounded religious, or 
even wise, to our ancestors, who were very averse to the use of long 
wordy narrations in addressing God, and who even considered it an in- 
dication of the divine spirit when nothing nominally was sought in 
prayer.t ‘That kind of supplication,’ says Hugo of St. Victor, 
‘¢ which consists in merely accumulating epithets, such as misericordia 
mea, refugium meum, susceptor meus, liberator meus, and so on, is so 
much the more full of internal delight as it is imperfect in external ex- 
pression; for affection has this property, that the more fervent it is 
within, the less can it be developed externally by the voice. And what- 
ever be the words we use, the nearer devotion approaches to humility, 
the more acceptable is it to God. In no way is God more effectually 
bent to hear us than when the mind of the supplicant is wholly con- 
verted to him with affection. And, therefore, whatever be the words of 


* Parad. xxii. + Card. Bona, de Discretione Spirituum, cap. 8. 


AGES OF FAITH. 383 


supplication, they are never absurd if they are only calculated to excite 
the affection of the supplicant to love God, or, what is still better, if 
they demonstrate that he is already kindled with his love.”’* Nor is 
this all, the Doctors of the middle age had learned with the author of 
the Angelic Hierachy, that as negations in divinity are often true aflir- 
mations, so to the obscurity of mysteries, a manifestation by means of 
dissimilar forms is more adapted,t and that divine and celestial things 
are often beautifully expressed by dissimilar symbols. Hence, as Hugo 
of St. Victor thinks, oxen, lions, eagles, horses, wheels, chariots, thrones, 
roses, towers, gates, stars, and similar figures are introduced, which in 
the estimation of those who only regard external things, are ridiculous, 
but to those who think piously and profoundly, they are far otherwise ; 
for besides that from all material and bodily forms, figures may be taken 
to represent the incorporeal splendours of a spiritual nature, it is certain 
that the very dissimilitude of the symbol conduces to express the excel- 
lence of the supernal object; for dissimilar figures, more than similar 
emblems, lead the mind from material and bodily things, and prevent it 
from resting in them. Every figure, therefore, so much more evidently 
demonstrates truth in proportion as by its dissimilitude it is clearly a 
figure and not the truth, and the more unlike is the figure, so much the 
more does it lead the mind to truth, preventing it from resting in the 
similitude. Therefore the wisdom of holy theologians wonderfully de- 
scends to the use of indecorous similitudes, not permitting our material 
carnal sense, so in love with matter, to rest in material images, but com- 
pelling it to pass on in search of other things more fair and true, and by 
the very baseness of the image, purging the intellectual power of the 
soul from all admixture with images, in order that purely and simply it 
may be led to contemplate spiritual and invisible things.{ Moreover, to 
any one who reflects, it is evident that a prayer of any length which is 
to be often repeated, must not be a studied, smooth composition, like a 
narrative arranged according to the rules of rhetoric, for besides that 
mere rhetorical effect, however sublime may be the emotion resulting 
from it, can never satisfy the religious ideal, such an attempt would 
argue an ignorance of the inevitable impotence of human language to 
approach what is due to the perfections of God, and the wiser heart 
would disdain the presumptuous effort of the understanding. After the 
first effervescence, all this froth of eloquence, and this inflated wisdom, 
would be converted into dregs, such as would excite rather loathing than 
kindle devotion ; but as a philosopher remarks, when we have employed 
the loftiest hyperboles, and exhausted all the figures of symbolic lan- 
guage, when we have dressed metaphysical abstractions in poetic rap- 
tures, when we have ransacked whatever things are most excellent 
among the creatures, and having defecated them and piled them up to- 
gether, have made that heap but a rise to take our soaring flight from, 
when instructed as well as inflamed and transported by that inaccessible 
light which is inhabited by what we adore, we seem raised and elevated 
above all that is mortal, and say things that surpass the intelligence of 
men, we can for ever open our lips in such strains of prayer, because, 


* De Modo Orandi libellus. { Dionys. Hierarch. cap 2. 
+ Hugo Victorin. Annotat. in Celest. Hierarch. 


384 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


although these expressions otherwise applied would be hyperboles, and 
though they do not express the object, they yet proclaim the fervour of 
our devotion, and declare not, indeed, what God is, but how much we 
honour him. 

No, the prayers of the church were composed by saints, and what is 
more, were used by saints and men of the interior life, of intuitive aes- 
thetic ideas, as some philosophers would say, and they knew what they 
were about; or, rather, they wrote from the inspiration of Him who 
made and knew what was in man. The human heart during many gen- 
erations has responded to the chord which they alone knew how to touch. 
Not from a trivial popular erudition, nor from the school of grammari- 
ans, nor from the tribune of rhetoricians, but from a sense and contempt 
of human things, from a profound care and investigation of wisdom, from 
a deep consideration of their own misery, and of the divine mercy, did 
they descend to compose these sacred offices. 

The church, it is true, has endeavoured to protect the faithful in the 
possession of her prayers, unmixed with other inventions, by prohibit- 
ing all new litanies in the public worship, excepting with such restric- 
tions as one might hope would be generally sufficient to discourage all 
aitempts of this kind; but it is, perhaps, still rather to be wished than 
expected, that these modern writers, who never question but that they 
are in the van of what is termed the march of intelligence, should cease 
from exercising their talents in this way; for, generally, in proportion 
to the poverty and ignorance of the mind, there will be a passion for 
changing and modifying ancient things. Impelled by a desire to do 
something, a shallow, conceited, restless intelligence will seek to distin- 
guish itself by reforming, as it pretends, the reliques of a less enlight- 
ened age; and, indeed, it would almost seem, as if in a certain stage of 
society, taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, had a greater charm for the 
cultivated class than the noblest sentences of a Chrysostom, or than the 
most majestic symbol of the Catholic liturgy. 

But to return. Wondrous is the skill with which the church in her 
offices blends together the ancient testament and the new, the figures 
and the reality, the promise and the accomplishment, and shows in the 
infinite variety of her forms, the profound unity of the Christian faith. 
She speaks, she sings herself. All these voices of prophets, evangel- 
ists, fathers, doctors, hymnographers, form a magnificent concert, in 
which no dissonance wounds the ear, but all is one spirit and one inspir- 
ation, and amidst a warmth, an enthusiasm, a tenderness, an astonishing 
compression of the great characters of the Christian mysteries, and above 
all, a firm, profound, and wondrously communicative faith. 

Admirably has the church evinced her judgment with regard to that 
greatest of difficulties which used to be treated of by the ancient philos- 
ophers, the observing of what the Greeks termed xpémov, the decorum 
of the Latins. ‘This is evinced in every part of the divine offices and 
ritual, in which the order of words is suited to the authority, the age, 
the condition, the place, and the time which are involved. Reader, | 
dare not give the reins to my discourse as we approach certain confines. 
Truly, with respect to them, it would be well to return to the ancient 
discipline of secrecy and the use of doubtful words, which was observed 
during so many ages, even after the liberty of the church had been ac- 


AGES OF FAITH. 385 


complished. It is well, like Orestes, to have learned from the purifica- 
tions with which one has sought to remedy his evils, to know when to 
speak and when to be silent.* I would walk lightly here. ‘The very 
ground seems to bleed and suffer. A great mystery is taking place. I 
see death and passion, and one is more inclined to weep than to admire ; 
but thus much I may observe, as one who to a single ear imparts his 
thought, that the sublime poetry of the opening dialogue of the holy 
mass has been remarked by many great authors. ‘This dialogue, says 
one, ‘is a true lyric poem between the priest and the catechumen. The 
former, full of days and experience, groans over the miseries of man, 
for whom he is about to offer sacrifice. The latter, full of youth and 
hope, sings the victim by whom he is to be redeemed.’? When the 
vaults of our churches resound with the joyful melody of O filii et filiz, 
what heart does not burn at hearing ‘the King of glory rises from the 
tomb! who is this angel clothed in white seated at the entrance of the 
sepulchre? Apostles hasten! happy are those who have believed and 
have not seen!’ Would not this simple chaunt of the church bear a 
comparison with the grandest creation of poetry? Does it not verify the 
saving of the ancients, that men are winged by means of words, for by 
these sublime words is not the soul lifted up, and is not the man raised ? 

Witness again the prose of Easter, Victime Paschali laudes. Behold 
how this song of triumph is lively, rapid, how it carries one with it, 
how in a few lines it invites to joy, relates the great combat, apostrophi- 
ses Mary Magdalen as a witness, and makes an act of faith and of prayer 
to the victorious Christ. ‘If that be not the genius of lyric poetry,” 
says a French critic, alluding to it, «¢I know not what is.”’ 

But where should one finish if one were to speak of the ‘‘ lauda Sion,”’ 
the ‘adoro te supplex,”’ the ‘‘stabat mater,”’ the ‘dies ire ?’’—if one 
were to describe the office of the dead, with its mournful lessons, its 
awful remembrances, its solemn and heart-piercing tones? “When to 
this majestic poetry and sound, is added the aspect of one of our Gothic 
churches by night, lighted up, notwithstanding its vastness, so that every 
mullion of the highest windows of the choir can be traced with all its 
beauteous tracery against the darkness of the exterior sky, while only 
the distant vaults of the nave and transepts fly away and bury themselves 
in mysterious obscurity, as I have seen the sublime Cathedral of Amiens 
on the night of All-hallows, when the vigils of the dead were sung there, 
at which an immense multitude assisted till a late hour in profound 
devotion,—assuredly the impression from the whole on all minds of 
ordinary susceptibility must be such as no language can adequately des- 
eribe; it must be like that resulting from some great event of which the 
memory is indelible. ‘+ Let ene only represent to himself,’’ says Miche- 
let, ‘the effect of the lights on those prodigious monuments when the 
clergy moved in procession through those forests of columns, animating 
the dark masses, passing and repassing through the long aisles, under 
those complicated arches, with its rich vestments, its tapers and its 
chants, when light and sound of unearthly harmony issued from the 
choir, while the ocean of people responded from the shade below ;— 
there was the true drama, the true mystery, the representation of the 


: * Eumenid. 276. 
Vor. IIl.—49 yas 


386 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


journey of humanity through the three worlds, that sublime vision which 
Dante has immortalized in the ‘ Divina Commedia.’”’ And on all occa- 
sions too what a beauty of solemn form surrounds one in the Church? 
Those shrines with sacred burning lamps in order long; those altars 
bright with a tall forest of burning tapers, casting streams of tremulous 
lustre like the matin star; those banners that move on in bright proces- 
sion; those angel forms bearing the lights; those lofty things which 
come so slowly moving towards us, that the bride would have outstript 
them on her bridal day*—how doés all this purify and exalt the imagi- 
nation? Can we wonder that it should have seemed to our feeling an- 
cestors like the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, 
prepared as a spouse adorned for her husband, that they should have 
expected to hear that great voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the 
tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them, and they 
shall be his people, and he will be their God? See those beautiful little 
chapels of our Lady or of the patron saint on each side of the nave, 
where every object is so admirable and delicate that those who assist 
within may imagine themselves to be in a paradise. ‘There amidst 
these bright symbols, from this cloud of fragrant incense, sweetly rises 
the day to Catholic youth, and no marvel that the remaining hours 
should flow on in innocence and joy. No marvel, I say, that the 
Church, as she desires in her prayer, should receive spiritual augmenta- 
tion from what she gains in material space, and that an eternal habitation 
for the majesty of God, of living and chosen stones, should be prepared 
out of the supplicant people. Look again, and let your eyes rest upon 
those children, who stand or kneel clad in white robes, and with lights 
in their hands, so like things enskyed and sainted, so expressive of 
purity, of obedience, and love, that if angels were to descend visibly, 
one concludes that assuredly it would be in sucha form. Fix them still 
upon that altar, and mark what is passing before it. How beautiful is 
every thing! how serene! as if the harmonious wisdom of the Church 
had actually moulded the external form of matter to its own perfection. 
Is not here that beauty manifested which Plato said was nothing but the 
splendour of truth? Catholicism has produced all the lovely forms 
which order can assume within the narrow limits of space and time. 
Mark the celestial habits and reverence of the grave wearers. O the 
sacrifice ! how ceremonious, solemn and unearthly it is in the offering! 
It fills one’s breast with the emotions described by Dante, when, after 
telling of the sweet strains of Paradise, he adds,— 
«And what I saw was equal ecstasy ; 
One universal smile it seem’d of all things ; 
Joy past compare; gladness unutterable ; 


Imperishable life of peace and lcve: 
Exhaustless riches and unmeasur’d bliss.” 


These impressions are not only thus profound and inspiring, but they 
are also durable, for to the mind that has once experienced them, all 
external beauty ever afterwards seems to be only a homage to the mys- 
tery of divine love. Every object in nature seems to merit the appella- 
tion which the Church applies to the element in the benediction of her 


A RP aN IU, 5 feet ap OEE a ek en meee One baits SHEA SEER Ns Wy SRE et 


* Dante, Purg. xxix. + Parad. xxvii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 387 


b 


fonts, ‘‘ hee sancta et innocens creatura;’’ and, in some way or other, 
serves to bring the mind in presence of those mysteries which are the 
fountain of all joy. ‘The separation between spirit and matter is thus 
removed, and all seems resolved into the unity of an harmonious creation, 
of which every part is good, so passing lovely, mind cannot follow it, 
nor words express its infinite sweetness. 

But let us investigate these things with unmoved bosom, as one who 
only chronicles the past. ‘The altar erected by Angelbert, Archbishop 
of Milan, in the year 830, in the Ambrosian Basilica, was valued at 
thirty thousand pieces of gold. ‘The whole front was composed of solid 
gold, studded with innumerable jewels, and over it stood twelve images 
of silver gilt, representing the Apostles.* ‘That in the Basilica of St. 
Mark, at Venice, was composed of alabaster and porphyry, and tablets 
studded with precious stones.t| Yet every church possessed what 
Ughelli mentions in describing the Cathedral of Naples, festive coverings 
for solemn days, which could add beauty even to these altars of gold and 
jewels.t What must have been the splendour on extraordinary occa- 
sions when more than usual magnificence was required? ‘The writers 
of the middle ages, to describe a person struck mute and made forgetful 
of every thing by one object, say that they felt an impression like that 
caused by the sight of a high altar at Easter or Christmas; for on these 
occasions the Church displayed all her treasures in honour of God, and 
the people used to offer choice flowers and costly vases for receiving 
them. ‘Then were used those choral elephantine books of such magni- 
tude and weight that it exceeded the strength of a man to support one 
of them, and of such rich adornment, that they used to be preserved in 
treasuries, wonderful specimens of art and industry, whether we con- 
sider the exquisite loveliness of the painting, the admirable beauty of the 
writing, or the costly and superb decoration of the exterior. In that 
vast and well filled choir of the dome at Florence, a light darkened on 
all sides but one, streams upon the huge volume over which it is sus- 
pended, which seems then from the distant parts of the nave, like one 
great flame in that solemn assembly, as if it were literally illuminated 
by that mighty book. ‘The ancient sacerdotal vestments, besides the 
general distinctions of colour, frequently bore in rich embroidery, either 
a representation of the mystery of the particular festival on which they 
were used, or as those in the monastic Church of the Escurial, an im- 
age of some saint or of the instrument of his martyrdom, in order to 
commemorate a patron or local founder. Generally from those white 
vestments denoting the unsullied lustre of a mystic and immortal joy, 
to those which are red from the memory of human evils, we can trace 
the same genius, the same delicacy of conception which designed the 
ornaments in the stone of the Gothic portal. A chasuble was like the 
rich splendour of a rose or tulip leaf. ‘The Creator saw man in making 
the former only imitating his own art. Yet these gave offence to the 
moderns ; as if God who has painted the flowers of the field, and cloth- 
ed the beasts and fowls of the earth, with such curious and exquisite 
colours, could be offended at the beauteous vestments of the priest who 
adores him, who assumes them with prayer, and trembling, and who 


* Italia Sacra, tom. iv. 82. tid ve 1177. + Id. vi. 669. 


388 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


wears them only out of humble reverence. Many details are extant 
respecting the pomp of worship in the middle ages. It would seem 
from an expression of Ives de Chartres, that out ‘of reverence for our 
Lord, the chalice and paten were generally of solid gold, for he requires 
that, at least, they should be of silver.* In the church of Monte Casino 
there were seven greater, and five lesser chalices of pure gold;7 but 
Saba, in his Wlestavients speaks of silver chalices gilt, which 1H had 
brought with him from Greece, for the church of St. Saviano at Messa- 
na, to which he also gave three most beautiful thuribles which he had 
purchased from certain Greeks.{ In a document of the eleventh centu- 
ry, we read of books bound in gold, and of gold chalices adorned with 
admirable gems, with an abundance of various inestimably precious or- 
naments for divine worship, which had been treasured up from ancient 
times in the great church of Salzburg.|| On two expositors and a cibo- 
rium of pure gold, there were reckoned upwards of three thousand of the 
most precious stones of rare magnitude: one of the expositors wrought 
with images, was moulded by Archbishop Eberhard de Neunhause, and 
cast, according to popular report, from a treasure found in Inberg.§ In 
the Cathedral of Naples, in the eighth century, the holy vessels of the 
altar were of solid gold. ‘Those in St. Mark’s Basilica, at Venice, were 
also of gold covered with gems. Ughelli says, that to describe the sa- 
cred ornaments, vestments, and other riches in the church of St. Justi- 
na at Padua, would require a volume.** We read of the ancient church 
at Durham, that in the processions, the prior had a marvellous rich cope 
of cloth of gold, which he was not able to walk upright with, for the 
weightiness thereof, but one held it up on every side. On one vest- 
ment only of Loretto they counted seven thousand jewels. In the ec- 
clesiastical annals of Sicily, we read of vestments in the churches of 
Palermo covered with innumerable pearls.tt In an ancient manuscript, 
which describes the destruction of Catana, by the eruption of Mount 
fKitna, in the year 1169, in which fifteen thousand persons, including 
the bishop, and a number of the monastic flock perished, the loss of the 
ecclesiastical ornaments was deemed a part of the calamity not unwor- 
thy of commemoration. 


“Unde superbit homo? Deus una diruit hora 
Turres, ornatus, vestes, cunctosque paratus.’’{t 


Florence could send forth nothing in costliness or beauty superior to 
those which were procured from her for the Abbey of Westminster, 
some of which still clothe on solemn days the worthy successors in the 
priesthood of England. Frequently it happens in this island, that an- 
cient tombs of pontiffs and abbots are broken open, and invariably we 
find the vestments of the richest texture and of the most beauteous de- 
sien. Forty persons worked continually during three years under the 
conduct of Lermino, a celebrated embroiderer, making vestments for the 
Cathedral of Strasbourg. ‘This was in a later age, but an enumeration 
of the gifts of Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Casino, to the church of that 


* Decret. pars ii. c. 131. + Chron. Casinensis, lib. ii. cap. 74. 
t Sicilia Sacra, ti. 1065. | Germania Sacra, tom. ii. 181. 
§ Id. 1005. **® Ttalia Sacra, v. 422; vi. 65. 


tt Sicilia Sacra, i. ++ Id. tom. i. 531. 


AGES OF FAITH. 389 


monastery, will convey an idea of the prodigious splendour of public 
worship in the tenth century.* In consequence of that profusion of 
jewels which adorned the altars, as we remarked in a former book, and 
which is found again here in surveying the vestments and other orna- 
ments employed in the solemn worship, mineralogical studies were 
then much cultivated. Thus Petrus Diaconus wrote a book, ** De Ge- 
neribus Lapidum Pretiosorum,’’ which he dedicated to the Emperor 
Conrad, and he translated from Greek into Latin, the book of Heva, 
King of Arxbia, on precious stones, addressed to the Emperor Nero, 
and which the Emperor Constantine had removed from Rome to Con- 
stantinople.t Mention has been made of the fragrant odour which filled 
the holy place on which men need not disdain to philosophize ; for who 
has not experienced the associations connected with it? ‘To how many 
minds does it recall the sweetest years of mortal existence, the recollec- 
tions of youth, and the thousand circumstances of early life, which derive 
such asecret charm from the solemn and beautiful ceremonies of the 
sacred choir? ‘* More good may be drawn from odours than is drawn,” 
says Montaign, ‘for I have often perceived that they change me, and 
act upon my spirits, which makes me approve of what is said respecting 
the use of incense and perfumes in churches, which is to gladden, ex- 
cite, and purify the sense, to render us more fit for contemplation. » An 
affecting allusion to this usage of the Church is often met with in the 
great ascetical writers. ‘*O most benign Lord Jesu Christ,” cries one 
of them, ‘* my consolation and refuge in all my trials and tribulation! 
O that thou wouldst deign, with celestial light and attending angels, to 
enter the house of my mind, and from a golden thurible filled with aro- 
matics, to incense all my interior, and to consecrate my heart as a tem- 
ple of the Holy Ghost, to sign it with the holy cross, to anoint it with 
the oil of grace, to place there the golden urn with manna, and to at- 
tach to my side fixedly the book of thy law, that in that I may study 
celestial things, and thy divine commandments day and night, so long 
as I shall be an exile on the earth.’’¢ 

Incense, which was used in the Jewish, is of great antiquity in the 
Christian Church, and it is mentioned with honour in the Scriptures, 
where it is compared to prayer, of which it is stillasymbol. Light was 
always regarded as a mysterious emblem. Clemens Alexandrinus thinks 
that man was called by the ancients 9s, from the same word signifying 
The lamps and candelabras, of curious workmanship, which 
were found in the sacred cemeteries of Rome, attest the usage which 
prevailed in the earliest times at the celebration of the Christian myste- 
ries.§ In the middle ages, the lights in churches were an occasion of 
wonderful magnificence. We read that, in the time of Charlemagne, in 
the church of the monastery of Ania, there was a multitude of lamps of 
pure silver, in the form of a crown, which used to be lighted with oil on 
the festivals, which so illuminated the choir, that in the night the whole 
church was as light as in the day ; and before the altar there were sus- 
pended seven lamps of the most beautiful and astonishing workman- 


* Chronic. S. Monast. Casinens. lib, iii. c. 20. 

+ Chronic. Casinens. lib. iv. cap. 66. + Thomas a Kempis, Sermonum, pars iii. 2. 

|| Peed. lib. i. c. 6. § P. Aringhi Roma Subterranea, p. 282. 
2u 2 


390 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ship.* Pope Adrian I. in the same age, gave to the church of St. Pe- 
ter a candelabra, which held, without confusion, thirteen hundred and 
seventy tapers or lamps. ‘Ihe crowns and chains from which lights 
were suspended, were often of pure gold or silver.t ‘Two great crowns 
of silver, from which were suspended thirty-six lamps, hung without 
the choir before the cross, in the church of Monte Casino.t There 
were there twelve towers of light called Phari, as if to shine over the 
ocean. Fortunatus, Patriarch of Grao, in the seventh century, gave two 
crowns of light to the church of that island, which had been desert till 
the year 565, when Christians first sought an asylum there from the 
Longobards. In each of these burned an hundred candles.|} 

Nor was it only during the celebration of the sacred offices that sym- 
bolic lights burned; they were maintained perpetually, night and day, 
before the blessed sacrament, before the images, and before the shrines 
of the saints ;—and a reference to wills, and other documents of the 
middle age, shows with what zeal devout persons contributed to the ex- 
pense incurred by them, leaving often their lands to the church for this 
express purpose. ‘‘ Pale lamp of the sanctuary,” exclaims a French 
poet, ‘* why, in the obscurity of the holy place, unperceived and solita- 
ry, consumest thou thyself before God? It is not to direct the wing of 
prayer or of love, to give light, feeble spark! to the eye of Him who 
made the day. It is not to dispel darkness from the steps of his ador- 
ers. ‘The vast nave is only more obscure before thy distant glimmer- 
ing. And yet, symbolic lamp, thou guardest thy immortal fire, and un- 
der the breeze of basilicas, thou dost flicker before every altar, and mine 
eyes love to rest suspended on this erial hearth, and I say to them, 
whom I comprehend not, ye pious flames, ye do well. Perhaps, bright 
particles of the immense creation, they imitate before his throne the 
eternal adoration. Is it thus, say I to my soul, that, from the shade of 
this lower place, thou burnest, a flame invisible in presence of thy God? 
In the night of the sensible world, I feel that there is a point inaccessi- 
ble to the obscurity of earth, a dawn on the hills, which will watch all 
the night long—a star which never sets—a fire which remains unextin- 
guished, unconsumed, in which incense can be at all times enkindled, to 
ascend in fragrance to heaven.” 

The procession with litanies was a solemn symbol, employed in the 
ecclesiastical offices from remote antiquity, as may be proved from Ter- 
tullian. In the first ages, churches were constructed with aisles for the 
processions, as expressly and constantly as with a sanctuary for the cel- 
ebration of the eucharist.— 

‘¢ Densa triumphali video procul agmina pompa, 
Atque hilares placidosque choros. 
Plurima pars niveis, variis pars altera fulget 
Vestibus, auratisque stolis. 
Jam sinuosa leves rapuerunt stemmata venti, 
Jamque micant pia signa crucis. 


Tartareas Christi propellit imago phalanges, 
Et superi properant cives. 


* Vita S. Benedicti Abb. Mabillon, Acta S. Ord. Bened. iv. 1. 
+ Chronic. S. Monast.-Casinensis, in cap. 26, note. 
t Chronic, Casinensis, lib. iii. c. 33. || Italia Sacra, tom. v. 1101. 


AGES OF FAITH. 391 


Ordo sacerdotum venerandaque turba canoris 
Carminibus passim exultant. 
Jam devota sacris operitur scena viretis, 
Jam sancte resonant voces. 
Alternis precibus pueri, innupteque puelle, 
Atque senes, juvenesque canunt.’’* 
Dante is reminded of such things on beholding a tribe of spirits in the 
other world :— 


* Such their step as walk 
Quires, chanting solemn litanies on earth.” 


Behold that solemn procession through the aisles of the Abbey Church 
of St Germain! The holy virgins in pure white robes, like very sanc- 
tity, and bearing bright tapers in their hands ; crowds of holy laymen, 
the noble, and the mechanic, side by side, alike humble, alike devout; 
the saintly students, the venerable clergy, slowly moving along, singing 
their pensive melody through the dusky space, shedding radiance as 
they pass along, while all around them lies in deep darkness. What an 
emblem is here of the path of the just through earth’s short pilgrim- 
age. , it is an impressive thing to mark the countenance of each one 
who glides before you. There are some who walk, rapt like men in 
sleep, unconscious of all around them, conversant solely with the in- 
ternal vision, in a rapture of angelic thought. Nicolas Flamel, whom 
we have so often had occasion to mention as constantly employing pain- 
ters and carvers to adorn places in Paris with devout figures and inscrip- 
tions, caused to be represented, on the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, 
a procession in sculpture, under which was writtten, 


** Moult plaist A Dieu procession, 
Selle est faite en dévotion.” 


During the ages of faith, the procession was considered an institution 
of no small importance, in an intellectual and spiritual point of view. 
Before those mystic flames, which seem to be mingled with the super- 
nal luminaries,—emblems of that star which never sets—it was thought 
that the delusive meteors of corrupt passion would die away, and be no 
more seen. “That pious crowd, still increasing as it proceeded, which 
passed on, walking in such humble guise after the blessed sacrament, 
was in sooth a sublime spectacle, as exhibiting to the eye of the world 
a multitude of men who sought to follow their celestial King, hungering 
and thirsting after him. ‘Isti sunt viri sancti, facti amici Dei,” is the 
involuntary testimony of all who behold them. Such were the conquer- 
ors and friends of God, who, despising the orders of triumphant princes, 
deserved eternal recompense. 

Whether this ghostly triumph—so venerable, from the associations 
connected with it, so inspiring, from the solemn truths which it symbol- 
ically shadowed forth—conduced to sanctify and illuminate the heart, no 
one, who worthily joined in it, was ever found disposed to question. It 
was while thus slowly moving along, step by step, with the multitude 
of believers, having the eyes bent upon the ground, and the ears charmed 
with an unearthly melody, that men felt their minds impressed with a 
new sense of the mysterious and supernatural side of life. ‘Then it was 


* Card. Bona, de Divina Psalmodia, 289. 


392 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


that they meditated on the eternal years, contrasted with the little space 
that remained to them of that mortal existence, the approaching end of 
which seemed to be proclaimed by the very stones beneath their feet. 
The earth on which they trod seemed to utter the Homeric lesson, 


a t é , 42S ~ Ne 
olny Ep pvddrwY yEvEen, Tornde xou Gvopuv.™ 


Processions, besides these universally observed by the Church, used 
to be celebrated in particular places, in consequence of the foundations 
made by private devotion. At Caen it being the custom for every trader 
in the market to give a penny to God, or more, according to his devo- 
tion, each trade selected one member every year, who was to receive 
this money, and on the day of Pentecost there was made a solemn pro- 
cession of all the trades, from the Church of St. Peter to the Church of 
St. Nicholas, and each bore a great taper, to which was attached as 
many crowns as had been received from that trade in the course of the 
year, in order, by this public display, to excite the people to mercy 
and charity to the poor; and after making the circuit of the church and 
cemetery of St. Nicholas, the procession was to return in the same or- 
der, and the tapers were then to be given up to the Hétel Dieu.t—In 
the year 1412, at the general procession of the Holy Innocents, there 
were a hundred thousand Parisians who walked barefooted.—So dear to 
men in the middle ages were these affecting solemnities, that we find 
them observed even in camps, between the contending hosts. ‘The 
description which Tasso gives of the procession before the walls of Jeru- 
salem, is taken from historical facts. Here first the clergy are seen lead- 
ing the van, followed by the mighty duke, walking alone, after the man- 
ner of princes; then come the barons and knights, two by two, all chant- 
ing the litany, invoking the blessed Trinity, and Christ’s dear mother 
and St. John, the holy angels with the elected twelve, the martyrs, con- 
fessors, and those whose writings teach the certain path that leads to 
heavenly bliss, and hermits also, with cloistered nuns, who pray upon 
their beads. Singing thus with easy pace, thus ordered they pass along 
—while the deep caves and hollow mounts give round about them a 
thousand echoes.— ag! . 

** It seem’d some choir, that sung with art and skill, 
Dwelt in those savage dens and shady ground; 
For, oft resounded from the hanks, they hear 
The name of Christ and of bis mother dear. 

Upon the walls, the Pagans, old and young, 
Stood hush’d and still, amated and amazed 

At their grave order and their humble song; 

At their strange pomp and customs new they gazed ; 
And when the show they had beholden long, 

An hideous yell the wicked miscreants raised, 
That with vile blasphemies the mountains hoar, 
The woods, the waters, and the valleys roar. 

But yet with sacred notes the hosts proceed, 
Though blasphemies they hear and cursed things; 
So with Apollo’s harp Pan tunes his reed, 

So adders hiss where Philomela sings. 

Nor flying darts nor stones the Christians dread, 
Nor arrows shot, nor quarries cast from slings; 


~ 


* Tl. vi. 146. t De Bourgueville Recherches et Antiq. de Normandie, liv. ii. 40. 


AGES OF FAITH. 393 


But with assured faith, as dreading naught, 
The holy work begun to end they brought.’’* 


With respect to the material grandeur of these spectacles, some idea 
may be formed by those who have visited Catholic countries even in our 
times. At the procession in Milan on St. Charles’s day, several vast 
antique crucifixes, of solid silver, covered with gold and jewels, and vast 
candlesticks, of gothic and most exquisite workmanship, are borne along. 
In the year 1191, took place the consecration of the Church of St. Mary 
de Flumine, at Ferantinum, which is a town in old Latium, upon a hill 
near the Latin way. In the procession were borne numerous lighted 
torches, twenty silver thuribles, twelve silver crosses, and four reliqua- 
ries.t T'o observe what a sense was generally entertained of the sym- 
bolic meaning of the procession, we should peruse the ancient writings, 
and the discourses which were on such occasions addressed to the peo- 
ple, many of which contain passages of extraordinary beauty. ‘ Inte- 
rior processions we should always make,”’ says Richard of St. Victor, 
‘‘but chiefly in this solemnity which is presented before us.”{ St. 
Bernard speaks as follows :-— 

««'The procession which we are about to celebrate, supplies us with 
many subjects for remark. We are this day about to celebrate a pro- 
cession, and shortly after it we shall hear the passion. What means 
this strange conjunction, or what were our Fathers’ thoughts in add- 
ing the passion to the procession? For the procession represents 
what was done this day, and why is the passion added which did 
not follow till the sixth feria? Wisely is the passion added to the 
procession, that we may learn to place no confidence in any joy of 
this world, since sorrow is the end of gladness, and that our prosper- 
ity may not slay us like fools, but that in prosperous we may be mind- 
ful of evil days, as also conversely. For the present scene is mixed 
with both, not only to secular men, but also to spiritual. ‘Therefore, we 
have to imitate our Lord’s humility in the procession, and his patience 
in the passion. But why did our Lord wish to have the procession, 
when he knew that his passion would so soon follow? Perhaps, that 
the passion might be more bitter which had been preceded by the pro- 
cession. O! what a contrast between ‘tolle, tolle, crucifige eum;’ and 
‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, osanna in excelsis.’ What a 
contrast between ‘King of Israel,’ and ‘ We have no king, but Cesar.’ 
What a contrast between the green branches and the cross, between the 
flowers and the thorns; between strewing their own vestments for him 
and stripping him of his own and casting lots for them! And now in 
this procession to-day there are those who go before, those who follow 
our Lord and those who walk by his side. The first are they who pre- 
pare the way for the Lord to your hearts, who guide you and direct your 
steps in the way of peace. ‘The second are those who, being conscious 
of their own weakness, follow devoutly and tread in the footsteps of 
those that walk before. The third, who adhere to his side, are those 
who chose the best part, who live only to God, and consider his pleas- 
ure. But behold all are in the procession of our Lord, and no one sees 
his face; for those who go before are engaged in preparing the way, 


* xi. Ll, + Italia Sacra, i, 675. + Sermo in Die Pasche. 


Vor. II.—50 


394 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


solicitous about the dangers of others, and they who follow cannot by 
any means see his face. ‘Those who are at his side can sometimes see 
him, but only by glances and not constantly or fully, so long as they are 
on the way. ‘Thus it must be, for no man shall see me and live. I shall 
not be seen, he says, in this life; no one shall see my face in this way, 
in this procession. ‘Therefore, may he of his goodness enable us so to 
persevere in his procession while we live, that in that great procession 
when he will be received with all that are his by God the Father, we 
may deserve to enter the holy city with him, who liveth and reigneth 
for ever and ever. Amen.’’* Again, on the festival of the Purification, 
he speaks of the procession thus. ‘In the procession of this day, we 
shall walk two by two as a sign of fraternal charity and social life. A 
solitary person intruding himself would disturb the procession, and 
trouble both himself and others, symbolical of those who separate them- 
selves, caring not to observe the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 
We shall all carry lighted tapers in our hands, lighted from the holy fire 
of the altar, and these represent good works; and that humility may be 
practised, the last are first, and the first last in the procession, for the 
boys and those of least honour are to walk before. And in the proces- 
sion no one can stand still, but all must continue to move forwards as in 
the way of life, where nothing can remain in the same state.”+ Thus 
speaks Bernard, and thus through his lips speak the ages of blessed 
thirst, so that this solemn walk of choirs was grateful alike to under- 
standing and to sense. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Arter considering the divine symbolism of the sacred offices, we are 
naturally led to philosophize respecting the ecclesiastical music which 
was found such sweet medicine to moderate the thirst of human souls, 
and prepare them for the refreshing streams of justice. Music, like 
painting as a fine art, is a new art, for as we owe perspective painting 
and the infinite exaltation of the modern over the ancient art to the 
paintings of the Catholic Church, so we are indebted to the ecclesiasti- 
cal musicians for harmony. Approach we now to contemplate altars 
bright with amarant and gold, and vaults that breathe ambrosial fra- 
grance, and holy words that in the blessed spirits elect, sense of new 
joy ineffable diffuse, and sacred song that wakens rapture high; no 
voice exempt, no voice but well can join melodious part, such concord 
is in faith. In all ages men have been convinced that music was a thing 
divine and belonging to the worship of God. Maximus of Tyre enfor- 


* Dominic. in Ramis Pal. Serm. ii. r + Id. in Purificat. Serm. ii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 395 


ces this doctrine.* Strabo says, that music is the work of God.t 
Pythagoras, that he might keep his mind always imbued with the di- 
vinity, used always to sing and play on the harp before going to rest, 
and in the morning. He also ascribed importance to it in respect of 
education.t Socrates, when of venerable age, did not disdain to learn 
the principles of music with boys. Plutarch, who ealls it the universal 
science,|| says, that the Lacedemonians paid more regard to music than 
to their food. The music of the ancients, which began in temples, was 
regarded as the source of civilization. Plato and Aristotle maintained 
that music was an essential part of the education of youth.§ Plotinus 
thought that by music men were led to God. Quinctilian says, that 
music is conjoined with the knowledge of divine things, that the wisest 
men were studious of music, and that it formed part of the education of 
youth from the days of Chiron and Achilles to that time.** Cicero ob- 
serves the general opinion of the Greeks, that the highest erudition was 
in music, so that Epaminondas the prince, he says, of Greece, was skill- 
ed in playing upon the lute and in singing, and Themistocles when he 
declined to play at a banquet was considered on that account less learn- 
ed. Whoever was ignorant of music was regarded as deficient in learn- 
ing.tt The early fathers remarked the excellence of music in its adap- 
tation to the human soul. ‘The science of music,”’ says St. Augustin, 
‘sis probably the science of moving well the mind.’’{t <‘'To sing and 
to chant psalms,”’ saith he, ‘is the business of lovers.’’|||| ‘* Nothing,” 
says St. Chrysostom, ‘‘so exalts the mind and gives it as it were 
wings, so delivers it from the earth, and loosens it from the bonds of 
the body, so inspires it with the love of wisdom, and fills it with such 
disdain for the things of this life, as the melody of verses and the sweet- 
ness of holy song.’’§§ The vague, indetermined, mysterious character 
of music defies all exact interpretation, but for that very reason it admi- 
rably represents the interior man. Whether it throws the soul into a 
revery full of noble melancholy, or into an enthusiastic rapture, no art 
harmonizes so marvellously with the sentiment and idea of infinity, and 
with the relations of God and man. ‘* Music, like poetry, is a longing 
desire which charms and even seizes upon the soul with a magical pow- 
er. In music,’”’ continues Frederick Schlegel, ‘‘as in other arts, the 
higher and the earthly, like soul and body, are bound to one another. 
The heavenly longing desire and the earthly are often inseparably 
blended together in one tone, as is the case also with all the first senti- 
ments of youth.” How beautifully does Shakspeare represent the 
effect of even the lightest music upon minds contemplative, in the scene 
between Amiens and Jacques, when the former repeats that song which 
begins with 
‘** Under the greenwood tree, 
Who loves to lie with me, 


And tune his merry note, 
Unto the sweet bird’s throat.” 


And Jacques says, immediately, ** More, I pr’ythee more.” ‘It will 


* xxi. + Lib. x. Geograph. + Jamblich. 15. | Lib, de Music. 
§ Conviv, de Legibus, vii. Politic. ** Lib. i. 10. tt Tuscul. i. 2. 
tt Lib. i. de. Musico, || || Serm. 33. §§ Hom. in Ps, 41. 


§ Philosophie der Sprache, 124. 


396 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


make you melancholy, Monsieur Jacques,” replies Amiens. ‘TI thank 
it,” cries his friend. ‘* More, I pr’ythee more. I can make any song 
yield melancholy. More, I pr’ythee more.’’ Still the other is loath. 
‘¢ My voice is rugged, I know it cannot please you.’’ The answer is 
the sane. ‘*I do not desire you to please me; I do desire you to sing; 
come, more; another stanza.’’ The philosophers of the middle age think 
it not too much to affirm that a love of music has a connection with a 
love of justice; for the pleasure of music arises from finding that every 
thing moves according to order, and that there is no disarrangement or 
discord. In fact, as Novalis says, All enjoyment is musical,’’* and 
for the same reason, since the original thirst of man is for justice. 
Great were observed to be the effects of music. St. Albertus, a monk, 
while he was a secular in the world, being present at a certain play 
with its music respecting the life and conversation of St. Theobald, was 
suddenly by divine grace so filled with compunction, that he began from 
that hour to lead a life of great sanctity.t St. Ansbertus, a monk, and 
Bishop of Rouen, while as yet a layman, and living in the court of the 
king, hearing some instruments of music, said within himself, **O glori- 
ous Creator, what will it be to hear that song of the angels who love 
thee, which is to sound for ever in the celestial courts! How sweet and 
admirable will be that chorus of saints when you ordain that the sounds 
of a mortal voice, and the skill of human instruments, should be able to 
excite the minds of the hearers to praise thee devoutly, their God and 
Creator.” When I was at Rome, I heard a young and noble English- 
man, a man of blessed life, and now of saintly order, express the same 
feelings on hearing music in the street. Gerard says of St. Adalhard, 
Abbot of Corby, that he was constantly of such a sweet intention to- 
wards God, that if while assisting at the royal councils he heard melo- 
dy, he had it not in his power to refrain from tears; for all sweet music 
seemed to remind him of the sweetness of his celestial country.{ St. 
Dunstan, while a youth, withdrew from the world to devote himself to 
music, and to the meditation of celestial harmony.|| ‘‘'They who love 
God,” says St. John Climacus, ‘are excited by secular and spiritual 
songs and melody to joy, and divine love, and to tears, although they 
who are addicted to pleasure may collect from them matter of perdition 
for themselves.§ Osbert, in his life of St. Dunstan, relates that the holy 
archbishop had recalled many from the turbulent affairs of the world by 
means of his musical science. Brother Pacific, one of the first disciples 
of St. Francis, had been celebrated while in the world for his musical 
science, and the holy Father employed him to instruct the other breth- 
ren in singing the hymn of the Sun, which he had composed in honour 
of God; for he wished that they should always sing it after their ser- 
mons, and that they should tell the people they were God’s musicians, 
and that they wished no other payment for their music but to behold 
them doing penance for their sins. Grievous enmity existed between 
the bishop and the governor of Assitium. St. Francis deputed two of 
his friars to present themselves before the governor, and invite him on 


* Schriften, ii. + Surius, 7 Aprilis. 
+ Vita S. Adalhardi. Mabillon Acta S. Ord. Bened. Sec. iv. p. 1. 
} Osbert, Monachus Cantuar, in ejus vita. § Grad. xv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 397 


his part to repair, with as many persons as he could collect, to the bish- 
op’s house, whither he had deputed two others to apprize the bishop. 
When all were assembled, the friars said, ** Lords and brethren, beloved 
in Jesus Christ,—Father Francis being prevented by sickness from com- 
ing here in person, has sent us here to sing a canticle which he has com- 
posed, and he implores you to listen to it devoutly.” ‘hen they com- 
menced this song, to which St. Francis had added a strophe appropriate 
to the occasion. ‘I'he governor heard them with hands joined, and eyes 
raised to heaven, weeping. When they had finished, he professed his 
desire to be reconciled with the bishop, who on his side only lamented 
that he had not been the first to show an example of humility. ‘Then 
they embraced and kissed each other, mutually demanding forgiveness, 
and filling the beholders with wonder and joy.* 

‘‘ Music,”’ says Cassiodorus, ‘ dispels sorrow, soothes anger, softens 
cruelty, excites to activity, sanctifies the quiet of vigils, recalls men from 
shameful love to chastity, by the sweetest rapture expels the diseases of 
the mind, and soothes, through the medium of the corporeal senses, the 
incorporeal soul.”’t ‘They who would dwell on this subject, may con- 
sult Clemens Alexandrinus;{ Justin Martyr;|| Bede;§ John of Salis- 
bury,§] who pays a tribute to the noble nature and admirable properties 
of music; William of Paris;** and Athanasius Kircher Fuldensis.tt 
Many and interesting are the reflections of the ancients with respect to 
the principles and application of music. Plutarch explains a saying of 
antiquity, ‘‘Love taught music,”’{{ on the ground adopted by the Pla- 
tonists, who taught that love was the master of all arts and sciences. 
Theophrastus says that music has three principles— grief, pleasure, 
and the divine inspiration.’’ If our space were not too limited, one 
would be tempted to collect some interesting details respecting the dif- 
ferent kinds of ancient music, and the use to which each was deemed 
applicable. It appears that the Dorian, which corresponded with our 
church music generally, was deemed proper for the education of youth ; 
that the Hypodorian, which seems to answer more particularly to our 
vesper strains, was rather soothing; and therefore the Pythagoreans used 
it in the evening to appease the cares of the mind, though Aristotle 
styles it magnificent, constant and grave. ||| It was called Hypodorian 
as being not greatly Dorian. The Phrygian music was martial ; §§ and, 
what is very remarkable, both Plato and Aristotle interdicted its use to 
youth. The Hypophrygian was adulatory and attractive, and suited to 
unstable minds. Aristotle says that its effects are like intoxication.7 
The Lydian was the music of pleasure; and yet such is the inherent 
dignity of man’s soul, from which nothing can totally banish the remem- 
brance of its fall, that, as Plato asserted, it was sad and plaintive.(*) It 
was this which was said to resound in the Elysian fields.(t) So associated 
is melancholy with the highest joy, that the Hypolydian was decidedly 
tearful, and said to arise from devotion and gladness; the Mixolydian 


* Les Chroniques des Freres Mineurs, liv. i. c. 116. { Lib. ii. Var. Ep. 40. 
t Stromat. vi. || Qu. 107. § Lib. de Musica. q Lib. i. c. 6, Policrat. 
** De Universo, pars ii. cap. 20. tt Lib. iii. Artis Magnet. 
tt Sympos. lib, i. |||} See 19th problem. §§ Clemens Alex. Strom, vi. 
4 See 19th problem. (*) UL. edie (t) Propert. lib. iv. Eleg. vii. 
2 


398 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


produced a double effect, for it excited men to joy, but immediately 
recalled them to sadness. It was this which the ancients used in tragedy. 
These seven tones were all recognized by the Pythagoreans.* In ac- 
cordance with St. Augustin and the early Fathers, St. Thomas, and all 
the noble geniuses of the middle age, are the faithful echo of the ancients, 
and agree with their opinion respecting the divine origin of music. ‘The 
importance attached to it in the middle ages, may be collected from 
various contemporary authors, such as Rabanus Maurus;t Isidore ;+ 
Rupertus Abbas;|| an author mistaken for Bede; and Richard of St. 
Victor.§ Vincent of Beauvais says that music is joined not only to 
speculation, but also to morality, for that there is nothing so proper to 
humanity as to be affected by it, and that no age is exempt from its 
influence ;** and John of Fulda says, that all the Roman pontiffs were 
either musicians or men who delighted in music. Raban goes so far as 
to say, ‘* This discipline is so noble and so useful, that he who is without 
it cannot properly fulfil the ecclesiastical office. ‘Quicquid enim, (he 
adds,) in lectionibus decenter pronunciatur, ac quicquid de psalmis sua- 
viter in ecclesia modulatur, hujus discipline scientia ita temperatur, ut 
non solum per hanc legimus et psallimus in ecclesia, immo omne servi- 
tium Dei rite implemus.’ For musical discipline,’’ he continues, ‘is 
diffused through all the arts of our life in this manner. First, if we keep 
the commandments of our Creator, and with pure minds observe his 
law; for it is proved that whatever we speak, or with whatever senti- 
ment we are internally moved by the pulsation of veins, is associated by 
musical rythm with the virtues of harmony. If we observe a good con- 
versation, we prove ourselves associated with this discipline; but when 
we act sinfully we have no music.’’tt ‘Sine musica,’’ says Isidore, 
‘‘ nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta: nihil enim est sine illa.”’{t In the 
middle ages, kings had their musicians, great nobles their musicians, 
towns their musicians. Music was deemed part of liberal erudition. It 
was treated upon by Boethius, Severinus, Berno, Otho, St. Gregory 
the Great, Theogerus, Cosmas, St. John Damascenus, Guido of Arezzo, 
and many others.|||| In the fourth century, the ecclesiastical music became 
more artificial than it had been in the infant church ; §§ but it was St. Gre- 
gory the Great who was the chief author or promoter of the choral song, 
ealled from him Gregorian or Roman, which was propagated through- 
out the whole western Church. ‘This, which was richer and more 
variegated than the ancient Gallican psalmody, was a precious remnant 
of the ancient Greek music, which had retained much of its original 
beauty. St. Gregory founded a school expressly to teach it, and com- 
piled books with notes to perpetuate it. We find musical skill, joined 
with exact judgment in divine mysteries, reckoned among the qualities 
of Leo II. Bishop of Palermo, in the seventh century.(*) During St. 
Gregory’s time, the choral song was introduced into England by St. Au- 
gustin, as John the Deacon relates. Bede is a witness that, in the mon- 


* Card. Bona, de Divina Psalmodia, 431, + De Inst. Clerical. iii. 24, 

{ Origin. lib. ii. | In lib. Reg. v. 23, § De Contemplat. v. 17. 
** Speculum Doctrinale, lib. xviii. cap. 2. +t De Instit. Cleric. lib, iii. cap. 24. 
t{ Etymolog. lib. iii. | Gerbert, de Cantu et Musica Sacra Prefat. 


§§ Id. tom. i. p. 240. (*) Sicilia Sacra, notit. i. 37. 


AGES OF FAITH. 399 


asteries of Britain, the divine office was sung as in St. Peter’s at Rome.* 
St. Theodore of Canterbury and St. Wilfrid of York were great patrons 
of this Gregorian song. In the year 747, in the Council of Cloveshoe, 
there were decrees for its especial cultivation. Charlemagne, who loved 
every kind of excellence, endeavoured also to promote it throughout the 
empire, being anxious, as he said, that the Latins should yield in nothing 
to the Greeks. He was passionately fond of the ecclesiastical chant, 
and used to sing himself in the church, morning, noon, and night, but 
only in an under tone, as Eginhard relates. ‘The school of Metz, for 
ecclesiastical song, had flourished under Pepin. Charlemagne sent two 
clerks to Rome, that on their return to Metz they might be able to teach 
the Roman song. From Metz it was propagated over all France. 

The names of some celebrated musicians of this time have come down 
to us. And modern writers, like Sir John Hawkins, though Protest- 
ants, pay profound homage to the genius of those ancient monks and 
bishops who were the conservators of music during so long an interval.t 

Notwithstanding this extraordinary zeal for the cultivation of music, 
the relative importance of virtues was not overlooked. Charlemagne 
condemns some who prefer a clerk or monk that sings well to one that 
lives justly and holily. For though, he adds, musical discipline is not 
to be despised, yet if both merits cannot be obtained, it seems more tol- 
erable to us to bear imperfection in singing than imperfection in living. t 
In the tenth century, music was in the highest repute. The greatest 
masters, such as Remi of Auxerre, Hubald of St. Amand, Gerbert, and 
Abbon, taught it with as much care as the highest science. ‘ Est decus 
humane nature musica summum, quam qui scire negat, ipsum se scire 
negabit,”’ says a manuscript poem in the Vatican, written in the time of 
Otho the Great. In England, celebrated for musical science, were St. 
Adelm in the eighth and St. Dustan in the tenth century, Eadmer, a 
chanter of the Church of Canterbury, in the time of St. Anselm, Simeon 
at Durham, Joannes Thannatensis, a great mathematician, at Canterbury, 
Wolston at Winchester, Thomas Walshingham at St. Albans, William 
Somerset, in the monastery of Malmsbury, and William of Evereux, 
treasurer of Henry I. In France, the musical science was celebrated of 
Geoffrey of Tours, St. Odo of Cluny, Peter, chanter and doctor of the 
University of Paris, and Adulphus, raised from being a chanter to the 
episcopal see of Autun, an example not unfrequent in history. Pope 
Urban IV. in the thirteenth century, had been educated among the chil- 
dren of the choir of a cathedral; and Lebeuf mentions a certain cardinal 
who had risen from the saine condition in the church of Lyons. Orderic 
Vitalis says that the Abbot Durandus, having a great knowledge of 
music, enriched the divine office with new pieces, and with new and 
very melodious airs. In Ireland there seems to have been no regular 
ecclesiastical chant introduced till the twelfth century. St. Bernard says 
that St. Malachy was the first to establish it there, ‘according to the 
custom of the whole world.” John the Monk, of Fulda, a disciple of 
Rabun Maur, was a poet and musician, ‘‘ who first composed, with 
varied modulation, artificial song in the church in Germany—a country 


* Lib. iv. de Gest. Angl. c. 18. t Gen. Hist. of the Science and Practice of Music. 
# Capital. ii. An. 811. Baluz. tom. i. 


400 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


in which it took such deep root, that in no other part of Europe was it 
more assiduously cultivated.’? Mabillon, in his Itinerary, speaks of the 
great importance which the Germans attached to music in the church ; 
whereas, he says, the French in his time regard figured music as an 
impediment to devotion. But it was an obscure and devout recluse who 
prepared a new epoch in the history of music. ‘This was Guido of 
Arezzo, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Pomposa, in the Duchy 
of Ferrara, who, in the eleventh century, was the author of the present 
system of musical notes, for which he was so greatly honoured, that 
Pope John XX. sent three messengers to invite him to come to him. 
He published his Micrologus about the year 1028. In a contemporary 
work he is entitled «* Musicus et monachus, nec non eremita beandus.”’ 
—In the prologue to his work, and in his letter to Michael, he speaks 
of the success of his invention with great humility. ‘*Since my natural 
condition, and the imitation of the good, made me diligent, I began, 
among other studies, to instruct boys in music. At length the divine 
grace was with me, and some of them, by the use of our notes, learned, 
within the space of a month, to sing at sight new and most difficult 
pieces, so that it furnished a spectacle to many.—Since posterity will be 
able, with the greatest ease, to learn the ecclesiastical chant, which cost 
me and all before me so much pains, I trust that I and you, and the oth- 
ers who assisted me, may obtain eternal salvation, and, by the mercy of 
God, remission of our sins, or at least, some prayers from the charity of 
so many. For if they used to intercede with God so devoutly for their 
masters, from whom they could scarcely, in ten years, obtain an imper- 
fect knowledge of singing, how will they not pray for us and for our 
assistants, who in the space of a year, or at the most, within two years, 
can make them perfect singers.” 

With respect to the merits of the music of the middle ages, it is cer- 
tain that it had arrived at a very high degree of perfection. ‘The love 
of God can supply and surpass all things. The most sublime elevation 
to which the soul can attain, becomes also, in relation to art, an inex- 
haustible source of celestial inspiration; for that which is most admira- 
ble in music, is derived from the sentiment of religion. In comparison, 
therefore, with the productions of the old Catholic school, modern science 
must stand mute. What, in fact, can any secular academy do to encour- 
age music, comparable to a church, where the voices of three thousand 
faithful are to mingle in the hymn of lofty praises, which is to be heard 
with ravishment by the glorified choirs of heaven? On this ground, the 
importance of the musical schools which were in cathedrals, where chil- 
dren were instructed, has been pointed out by recent authors.* ‘Truly, 
it would require a different tongue from mine to speak of all the musical 
beauties in the sacred offices. The plain chant in the Holy Week, irre- 
sistibly affects the soul with a sadness unutterable. hat of the Sta- 
bat,”’ places the blessed Mary before our eyes, as if with the pencil of 
Raphael ; that of the ‘* Miserere,”’ moves the soul to its centre; that of 
the funeral office, is terrific like the voice of death, sublime like the 
angel’s announcement of resurrection, ‘The admirers of the wonders 


* Sur l’Origine de la Maitrise des Enfans de Cheeur de la Basilique Metrop. de Paris 
Mag. Encyclop. tom. v. 


AGES OF FAITH. 401 


of art flock to the Sextine Chapel, at Rome, to behold the Last Judg- 
ment of Michael Angelo, but in every country of the world, one may 
turn pale with fear and admiration before a still greater work, a compo- 
sition of still more marvellous energy, before the ‘‘ dies ire,’’ which is 
sung over the dead man’s bier. ‘If a musician were asked to compose 
a piece without accompaniment, without either rythm or modulation, 
and to confide the execution to the rude voice of some parish singer, 
and on these conditions to create the sublime, where,’’ says a modern 
French critic, ‘is there an artist that would accept the wager? Never- 
theless, this is what has been realized by some poor monks, whose 
names have not even come down to us, but in whom faith and piety 
have been able to accomplish what genius would not have had courage 
to attempt.” 

The religious houses have always proved themselves the asylums of 
the Muse. Jomelli, Gluck, and Mozart, sought advice in music from 
the Franciscan friar Martini, of Bologna, who formed a musical library 
of seventeen hundred volumes, and who is said amidst modern corrup- 
tions to have preserved in his compositions all the dignity of the ancient 
style. The music as well as the poetry of the Catholic Church seem 
like a faint echo of that primitive language, in which man spoke to God 
in the state of innocence, the sounds of which can revive in some man- 
ner those powers of sentiment and virtue, which the Creator placed in 
his heart. In the middle ages men were scrupulous in adhering to the 
great traditions of art in the composition of music. Thus Letaldus says 
of himself, on composing music for the feast of St. Julian, that “* he was 
unwilling to depart from the similitude of the ancient song, lest he 
should produce either a barbarous or a novel melody. For the novelty 
of those musicians does not please me,”’ he adds, speaking like Plato, 
‘¢who make use of such dissimilitudes, that they seem to disdain to fol- 
low the old authors.’? To the same effect speaks Hugo of St. Victor, 
‘¢Non enim decet, ut cantus et usus ecclesiasticus fieri debeat secundum 
arbitrium diversorum, sed firmiter servandus est secundum scripta et in- 
stituta majorum.’’ The Psalms of David were tuned to that Dorian har- 
mony which sounded forth in the hymn of Terpander, the antiquity of 
which music is remarked by Clemens Alexandrinus ;* and as Muller 
observes, a manly character was always attributed even to the Dorian 
dialect. St. Bernard, in his letter to the Abbot /Erremacens, describes 
what ought to be the style of Church music, “full of gravity, being 
neither lascivious, nor rustic. Sweet without being frivolous, soothing 
to the ear, but so as also to move the heart. It should appease sadness, 
mitigate anger, and not diminish but fecundate the sense of the words.” 
There was no affectation or levity in the ecclesiastical music of the mid- 
dle ages. ‘+ With the canticles and hymns of the Church,” says Cardi- 
nal Bona, ‘‘ we console this solitude of our exile until we come to our 
celestial country, when we shall sing that new immortal song, without 
any mixture of grief.’’ For at present, as there are no joys without 
some misery, so, as the Abbot Paschasius Radbertus says, ‘ there is no 
song found without lamentation: for songs of pure joy belong to the 
heavenly Sion, but lamentations to this our pilgrimage.””. The Church 


* Stromat. vi. 11. 
Voit. IL.—851 212 


402 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


was so impressed with a sense of the importance of music being adapted 
to the Catholic philosophy, that all music composed by heretics was 
prohibited from being used in the Church by a synod in the year 1567. 
In fact, Catholic music is the sister of Catholic manners. It is the 
expression of faith, hope, and charity: it is the voice of penance, of 
simplicity, and love. However rich, however ravishing, this was its 
essential character. What musicians were those who composed the 
sublime masses which raised souls to heaven, in which the music con- 
sisted entirely in a simple phrase of the chaunt in an artless and even 
popular air, but which, directed by all powerful harmony to suit the 
different parts of the mass, could express so many various passions! At 
the ‘‘kyrie,”’ those of submission and pity; at the ‘gloria in excelsis,” 
those of admiration; at the ‘* passus,”’ suffering; at the ‘ resurrexit,”’ 
joy; at the **agnus Dei,” gratitude and peace. ‘These were the inspira- 
tions of men in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a Dufai de Chi- 
mai, a Binchois de Paris, an Ockeghem of Bavaria, a Leteinturier of 
Nivelle, a Josquin of Cambray. ‘These great musicians of the school 
of Cambray, instructed all the north of France. Artificial skill is not art. 
The moderns, as a German philosopher remarks, ‘‘ have cultivated more 
and more the luxury of harmonic accompaniments and instrumental 
concord, but only to promote the phantastic interest of a confused enter- 
tainment. The best judges sigh after the simple elevation of the ancient 
style, and recognise their chief masters in the first composers of the old 
simple harmonies of the Church.’’** Under the inspiration of faith, art 
was a great and holy thing. It was the reflection of God. It was 
the invisible world, the soul world. Palestrina and Mozart composed 
figured music equal in solemnity and feeling to the noblest tones of the 
Gregorian chaunt. ‘They created melodies which should never be sung 
excepting on one’s knees: the beautiful simplicity of the ancient Church 
chaunts so struck Purcell when he began to study them, that he exclaim- 
ed, ‘* surely this must have been composed at the gates of heaven where 
is such melody, as but to hear, for highest merit were an ample meed.”’t 
Under the influence of Catholicism, poetry and music sent forth sounds 
such as the ear of man had never before heard. Sooth no tongue can 
be adequate to give an idea of the impression produced by the plain 
song of the choir. It is full of poetry, full of history, full of sanctity. 
While the Gregorian chaunt rises, you seem to hear the whole Catholic 
Church behind you responding. It exhales, says Genéroult, a perfume 
of Christianity, an odour of penitence, and of compunction, which over- 
come you. No one cries how admirable! but by degrees the return of 
those monotonous melodies penetrates one, and as it were impregnates 
the soul ; ‘and if to these be added personal recollections a little sad, one 
feels oneself weep, without ever dreaming of judging, or of appreciating, 
or of learning the airs which one hears. In respect to art, one may 
pronounce without hesitation, that men such as Auschylus describes, 
who never in their hands bear the olive branch, having lost the faculty 
of prayer, the thrilling emotion in presence of the Father and Creator 
of the world, who, in short, experience nothing but ordinary sensations 
when they hear the chaunts of the Church, must be degraded beings, 


* Fries. 241. + Dante, par. xiv. 


AGES OF FAITH. 403 


insensible to the magnificence of nature, deaf to the nightingale or to the 
murmur of the woods, dead to poesy and to music, and susceptible of 
no enthusiasm, (man must desire something with ardour) but for objects 
disgusting and absurd. 

Organs, whether hydraulic or pneumatic, were nearly the only instru- 
ments used in the churches in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, all 
others being rejected in consequence of abuse and the fear of theatrical 
effect.* Some writers, among whom was our CElred of Rievaulx,t 
complained of excess in the use of organs, though in the same age, Pe- 
ter the Venerable, of Cluny, was defending the use of them against the 
Petrobrusians. ‘The sacred Psalmist had expressly desired men to take 
up the harp and the cymbal, which judgment was more than sufficient to 
counterbalance the opinion of isolated philosophers. St. Augustin had 
lamented the blindness of the Manicheans in rejecting sacred music, 
saying, ‘‘ that they knew not these medicines, and that they rage against 
the antidote by which they might be healed.’ ‘The first organ which 
appeared in Europe was sent as a present by Constantine Copronymus, 
to Pepin, King of France, in the year 757. ‘This was placed by him 
in the church of St. Corneille, at Compiégne. The secret of the con- 
struction of these steam organs is now entirely lost. ‘The first organ on 
the present principle which was seen in the west, was that which Lou- 
is-le-Débonnaire placed in the church of Aix-la-Chapelle. It is an or- 
gan of this kind which is mentioned in the annals of Fulda, in the year 
828. At the close of the ninth century many skillful organ builders 
were drawn to Rome by Pope John VIII. In the tenth century, an 
organ of this description was placed in the Abbey of Westminster. 
Walafried Strabo, describing the church of Aix-la-Chapelle, mentions a 
surprising instance of the effect of the wonderful organ which was in it; 
for he says, that a woman expired through rapture and surprise at the 
sweetness of its sound. 

“ Dulce melos tantum vanas deludere mentes 


Ceepit, ut una suis decedens sensibus, ipsam 
Femina perdiderit vocum dulcedine vitam.” 


This organ was made by George, a priest of Venice, and by a Count 
Baldric. So delicious and astonishing was the music of organs and 
flutes, at the consecration of the monastic church of Cava, near Salerno, 
which was conducted with the utmost pomp, that what between the 
harmony and the sweet odours which were continually burning, the Se- 
rene Duke Roger, and all the people present, thought themselves on the 
very borders of heaven, as is attested by the chronicle in the archives 
of that house.t In the tenth century, organs used to be supplied from 
Italy, as appears from the epistles of Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylves- 
ter II]. The organ in the church of Brunswick was made by Arnold, a 
priest of the order of St. Francis, and that in the monastery of Trudbert, 
in the Black Forest, was made by Conrad Sittenger, a Benedictine monk 
of St. Blaise. As these instruments were made by religious men, so 
were they chastely touched by their pious and master hands. 

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was the custom to place the 


* Gerbert de Cantu Sacra, tom. i. 99. + Specul. Charitatis, lib. ii. cap. 23. 
+ Italia Sacra, vii. 368. 


404 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


organ in the choir; but in the fifteenth century it was deemed preferable 
to remove them to the western extremity of the nave. The expression 
of golden mass, ‘‘ aurea missa,’’ which occurs in the books of the mid- 
dle ages, implied a mass which was celebrated with extraordinary mag- 
nificence. ‘This used to last three or four hours, in consequence of the 
music.* Of these solemnities, Dante is reminded when borne along by 
Beatrice over the waters of Lethe, and led to the symbol of our Saviour: 
“The blessed shore approaching, there was heard 


So sweetly, ‘Tu asperges me,’ that I 
May not remember, much less tell the sound,”+ 


alluding to the prelude of scattering the holy water, which usage has 
been always in the Church from apostolic tradition,{ following the ex- 
ample of Elijah the prophet, who is recorded to have mingled salt with 
water, that with this infusion the bitter fountains might be converted in- 
to sweet.|| Admirable was the adaptation of the different strains to the 
successive stages of the sacred mystery. Rupertus says, that the grad- 
ual used to be sung in lugubrious tones by men, and that this was fol- 
lowed by children singing in a sweet and joyous manner the Allelujah 
in a continued strain, protracting a short word, as it is not strange that 
the human voice should fail in speaking, where the mind does not suf- 
fice for thinking. ‘This was so ordained, he says, to express the con- 
solation which awaited mourners according to the sentence, ‘‘Beati qui 
lugent quoniam ipsi consolabuntur;”’ for this joyful Allelujah carries 
away the astonished mind, and directs it to that place where will be 
always life without death, and day without night. ‘The sequence was 
‘that breathing or protracting of short words to denote a joy which was 
greater than one could express. Hence in the ancient sequences, we 
find unknown words, because, as Cardinal Hugo says, the manner of 
praising God in our country is unknown to us. But the proses sung 
before the Gospel, which date from the tenth century, were also called 
sequences, because the Gospel followed them. The music at the offer- 
tory continued while the oblations were received, and until the “Per 
omnia secula,’” was chaunted by the priest. ‘The Mixolydian song of 
the preface, which shall be sung long as time endures, is the same as 
what is found in the most ancient monuments. After the ‘« Sanctus,”’ 
the choir, or as it was sometimes called, «the school,’’ was silent. 
This custom prevailed in the time of St. Chrysostom, for he says, that 
at the consecration all was silence, woaay jovyva, 20ary ovyn. This is the 
moment when the priest is left alone at the altar, the deacon and sub- 
deacon falling back, to signify, as Durandus says, how the disciples 
forsook Christ and fled.§ ** The silence which follows the ‘Sanctus,’ ” 
says Stephanus Augustodunensis, indicates the commemoration of the 
Passion ;’’ and Rupertus says, ‘* After the joyful acclamation of the peo- 
ple there follows the history of secret grief, which is a cause of pro- 
found silence. At the fraction of the Lord’s body, the agnus dei, and 
the dona nobis pacem were solemnly sung by the choir, and at the com- 


* Gerbert de Cantu Sacra, tom. i. 354. + Purg. xxxi. 
t Joan. Devot. lib. ii. tit. vii. §. 1. 

| Hugo de St. Victor de Sacramentis, lib. ii. p. ix. c. 2. 

§ Rationale, lib. iv. cap. 34. 


AGES OF FAITH. 405 


munion the sweetest strains of hypolydian harmony were protracted, in 
order, as the writers of the middle ages say, that the minds of the peo- 
ple who were about to receive the Lord’s body might be exalted and 
tranquillized: or according to the words of a manuscript of the tenth 
century, ‘that the faithful about to communicate may inhale, in har- 
mony, him whom they receive within their lips, that they may remem- 
ber, that he whom they feed upon as corporal food, was crucified dead 
and buried.’”? For this cause the music continues, that so long as the 
people are receiving the celestial benediction, their minds, by the charm 
of melody, may be retained in a state of sweet imprisonment. Finally, 
the deacon was to chaunt the Ite missa est, in a wondrous and a melodi- 
ous note, in order, as it were, with the last hand to impress on the hearts 
of the people the memory of what they had seen and heard.* What 
a profound sense does all this indicate of the reverence due to the cele- 
bration of those tremendous mysteries in which God has placed the 
fountain of all holiness ! 

Such then was the ecclesiastical music during the middle ages, till the 
commencement of its decline, which, according to the natural order of 
things, was contemporaneous with the decline of faith and the introduc- 
tion of the new opinions; for a change of manners necessarily superin- 
duced a change in the style of music. In the fifteenth century a pro- 
fane theatrical music began to be introduced into churches, which was 
censured by Pope Benedict XIV. in his encyclical letter in the year of 
the jubilee, and again in his works, in which he called upon all bish- 
ops to correct this abuse. Martin Gerbert, a Benedictine monk of the 
monastery of St. Blaise, in the black forest, composed his great work 
on sacred music, expressly with a view to stem, if possible, this deplo- 
rable evil, which he laments in language of piety and good sense. ‘This 
abuse of church music gave great scandal at its commencement, as may 
be seen in the writings of Cornelius Agrippa, Erasmus, and others. It 
arrived at such a height, that the fathers of the Council of Trent delibe- 
rated whether they ought not to abolish all music in the churches ex- 
cepting the Gregorian. Satan seemed to have again crept into the para- 
dise of man on earth, the house of God. The chaunts were left to profane 
untonsured artists, who substituted a hypophrygian style, consisting of 
fanciful digressions and exaggerated bombastic flourishes for the ancient 
simplicity, the dignity of the priesthood, and the reverence of God. 
Anthems were sacrificed to exhibit the fantastic powers of vain men, 
who knew nothing of devotion, and who very often were persons who, 
by the canons, stood excluded from so much as entering the assembly 
of the faithful. False character, false expression, and frivolty, under 
the title of brilliant execution, became the prevailing vices of music. 
This Phrygian, or hypophrygian music, full of insolent grandeur, noisy, 
tedious, and abounding in insipid repetitions, adulatory and suited to un- 
stable minds, indicated clearly enough the influence of the new spirit 
which had superseded the reign of faith and Catholic devotion, and 
might have made men desire even the Lydian strains of the ancients, 
which, though their music of pleasure, had still, as we have before re- 
marked, the character of sorrow and compassion. 


* Rupertus Tuitieenis de Div. Off. lib. ii. 


406 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


The abuse of organs was strictly prohibited, though in more recent 
times it has outstript all bounds. St. Charles Borromeo prescribed, 
that although the organ may be used in hymns, yet every verse is to be 
distinctly pronounced in the choir ;* that in like manner the credo was 
not to be performed alternately by the choir and by the organ, but that 
all of it was to be sung.t At the Synod of reves, it was required that 
the organ should be silent at the elevation; and according to the Synod 
of Cologne, one of the questions to be proposed by the visitors of 
churches was, ‘* Whether the organ was silent at the elevation.”” Gen- 
erally it was enjoined that no verses should be intercepted, and no hymns 
mutilated by the organ. The pontifical chapel at Rome, to the present 
day, has constantly rejected the use of organs, as have some ancient 
churches, such as that of Lyons, and some religious orders, such as that 
of the Carthusians. 

Sweet and intellectual was the harmony of youthful and aged voices 
joining in saintly chorus, worthy to be of angels heard; but sudden 
bursts of deafening noise, large floods of sound, mechanically sent forth 
in impetuous streams, would seem less in accordance with the still small 
peaceful voice of heaven. 


CHAPTER V. 


We have seen the importance ascribed to music generally by the great 
philosophers of the middle age: but let us now attend to what they de- 
liver in its praise, when directed in particular to enhance the solemnity 
of the ecclesiastical offices. 

“It is good,’ says St. Bernard, ‘to glorify God with hymns, and 
psalms, and spiritual songs. The church chaunt rejoices the minds of 
men, refreshes the weary, invites sinners to lamentation; for although 
the heart of secular men may be hard, yet immediately when they hear 
the sweetness of psalms, they are converted to a love of piety.”” Dante 
seems to express this when he describes his hearing in purgatory the 
strains of dulcet symphony: 

‘** Then the ice, 
Congealed about my bosom, turn’d itself 


To spirit and water, and with anguish forth 
Gush’d, through the lips and eyelids from the heart.” 


St. Isidore of Spain speaks to the same effect, recommending music, 
that those who are not moved to compunciion by words, may be excited 
by the sweetness of melody; for, he adds, quoting the words of St. Au- 
gustin, ‘‘all our affections have I know not what certain occult connec- 
tion with diversity or novelty of sounds;’’ and St. Thomas proves the 


* Concil. Mediol. i. p. 2. n. 51. + Concil. Rhemense, an. 1564. + Xxx. 


AGES OF FAITH. 407 


advantage of music on the same ground.* Of St. Adelard, abbot of Cor- 
by, it is related in Bollandus,t that whenever he used to hear a sweeter 
music in the divine office, he could not refrain from tears. St. Bernard 
relates that St. Malachy used often to say how greatly he was delighted 
by the chaunt which he heard in the monastery of Clairvaux. For even 
in these austere houses of penitence the graces of music were cultivated 
and appreciated. In the chronicle of the monastery of St. Trudo, it is 
related how Guntram, when first admitted as a youth into the choir, on 
the night of the conversion of St. Paul, filled the whole community with 
astonishment, unmixed with envy, at the sweetness and power of his 
voice; and with what humility he stood forth, at the command of the 
abbot, to sing the response which belonged to the office of another, who 
was of high dignity, which he executed with such power that the abbot, 
immediately after the office, appointed him to the second place in the 
choir.t «The reading and meditation of the scriptures, and the devout 
chaunt of psalmody,”’ says Richard of St. Victor, ‘‘strengthen the mind 
and render the weak firm.’’|| Vain is the censure and most shallow the 
judgment of the moderns, when they say that the poor cannot understand 
the regular offices. ‘* When men hear sacred song,”’ says St. ‘Thomas, 
‘although they may not understand the words which are sung, yet they 
understand for what purpose they are sung, namely, to praise God, and 
this is sufficient to excite devotion.’’§ ‘That ignorance of the poor can 
hardly be so great an evil, since Dante describes his having experienced 
it in paradise : 
*¢ Unearthly was the hymn which then arose: 


I understood it not, nor to the end 
Endured the harmony.” 


And in fact, who has not marked the profound impression which the 
solemn tones of the Gregorian chaunt make upon the multitude in Cath- 
olic lands ?—the mystic joy with which it is sung by children, like holy 
innocents, and by old men, who have in their looks an expression which 
seems to tell that they know what takes place in paradise? It is not by 
learning that men can qualify their souls for the reception of that heav- 
enly peace which this holy song visibly inspires. ‘Truly the words of 
David thus loudly and articulately announced in the majestic Latin of 
the vulgate, seem an unearthly voice, teaching the wisdom of the eternal 
ages. Each word makes every heart vibrate as it unfolds the thousand 
mysteries of human thought, and the secrets of the conscience of man. 
How this divine voice enables us to see from on high and without fear, 
all the shocks which make weak mortals tremble, and which drag so 
often to the abyss, individuals and nations! Oh, who is not moved by 
the oracular sentence of the psalmist? Amidst the regrets, the agonies, 
the discouragements of life, who has not felt the power of that great 
voice which speaks in the depth of night, which touches and which con- 
soles?’ These Latin psalms and hymns, so sweetly and solemnly sung 
in the daily offices of the church, in which all classes joined, diifused 
a complete tone and spirit through society in the middle ages; so that 


* 2.9. 0 OTL Are S + T. I. Jan. ad. diem xi. 
+ Apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. ii. 661. | In Cantica Cantic. ¢, ii. 
§ Serm. 2, 2. 9. 91. Art. 2. 


408 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


the spirit of the psalms, and the spirit of the Gregorian song, became 
the spirit of the times. It is one thing, as the character of modern ages 
can testify, to read these things in a library, and it is quite another to 
hear them announced in majestic strains under the holy vaults of those 
churches, which no one that has a heart can ever enter without venera- 
tion and trembling. | 

The most familiar office was always new, for the events of the world 
and the vicissitudes of each man’s fortune, every day throw a fresh light 
upon the words of this eternal wisdom, so that their profound sense 
seemed never exhausted, but was continually receiving further illustra- 
tion by the crimes and follies, by the calamities and by the virtues of 
men; for in the psalms every thing is foreseen and set at rest on its true 
foundation, even down to the calamities and sophisms of the time we 
live in. Homer says of his hero, ‘¢ He was suffering cruel wounds from 
a diseased heart, but he found a remedy, for sitting down beneath a lofty 
rock, looking down upon the sea, he sang as follows.’’*—-If the aspect 
of rocks and the sound of the waves could inspire consolatory thoughts 
and prompt a cheering song, what would he have found in our churches 
had their reviving oracles been heard? 

When Francis I. was made prisoner in the park of the Carthusians at 
Pavia, he desired to be conducted into the church, when the monks at 
that moment singing Tierce, were chaunting the verse, ‘* Coagulatum est, 
sicut lac, cor eorum; ego vero legem tuam meditatus sum.’’ The king, 
disposed to a solemn feeling by his misfortunes, joined them in repeat- 
ing the next verse. ‘*Bonum mihi quia humiliasti me, ut discam Jjusti- 
ficationes tuas.”? O genuine glitter of Eternal Beam, with what sudden 
force dost thou enlighten the darkness which resteth upon the uncertain 
and intricate ways of mortal life, pregnant with delusive phantoms! 

What counsel, what consolation for humanity amidst its unnumbered 
woes, in the constant recurrence of those holy psalms, sung by the 
church, day and night! For what lesson of wisdom and patience, and 
heroic virtue, did they not teach? Did they not inculcate, as St. Basil 
says, ‘“‘the magnificence of fortitude, the exact severity of justice, that 
temperance, so venerable even in its aspect, the perfection of prudence, 
the form of penance, the measure of patience and every kind of good ?t 
To observe with what care the profound sense of the different parts of 
the ecclesiastical office was explained by the doctors of the middle ages, 
we need only refer to the remarks of Hugo of St. Victor, on the song of 
the Magnificat, where he shows that it is not without great reason that 
it is sung with such peculiar veneration by the church. 

‘‘In the book of Psalms,’’ says St. Ambrose, ‘there is a medicine 
of salvation for the human race: the psalm is the benediction of the peo- 
ple, the praise of God, the voice of the church, the confession of faith, 
the full devotion of authority, the joy of freedom, the cry of rapture; it 
mitigates anger, it banishes care, it alleviates sorrow, it hails the birth 
of day, it attends also its decline, it sanctifies the stillness of night. ‘The 
apostle commands women to keep silence in the church, but they may 
chaunt the psalm with praise. This is sweet to every age and becoming 
to both sexes; this old men sing and forget their infirmites ; this young 


* Tl. vi. { Pref. in Ps. ¢ Annot. Elucid. Alleg. in Marcum, lib. iii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 409 


men sing and commit no intemperance; youths sing the psalm without 
danger to their innocence, and maidens without disparagement to their 
modesty. Children love it, and it even fills infants with admiration. 
Kings and emperors sing with their people, because the psalm is _profit- 
able to all.’”* 

Hugo of St. Victor, in a golden little book on the mode of prayer, 
refutes the objection of those who would deny the fitness of the divine 
offices, on the ground of their not being composed exclusively in the 
deprecatory form. ‘*Some,” he says, “are accustomed to ask why, 
when we wish to pray God for ourselves or others, we sing certain 
psalms, which neither contain words of petition nor have any relation 
apparently to our wants,—and moreover, use other parts of Scripture as 
a prayer, though they have no form of supplication or connection with 
our state ; what advantage arises then from using words which express 
nothing of what we ought to ask from God? what skills it to sing, 
‘Quare fremuerunt gentes,’ or ‘ Attendite, popule meus?’ Is it not ri- 
diculous to fancy that we pray when we sing such things !—This is 
what they say: but whoever diligently considers the nature of prayer, 
will easily discern how such words avail. This kind of prayer is often 
found more efficacious than that in which we manifestly and explicitly 
declare our wants. For there is this difference between supplicating 
man and God—that man cannot know our necessity unless he be in- 
formed of it; whereas God knows it before we ask. Man, therefore, 
must be informed by our narration; but in prayer to God, narration is 
unnecessary. ‘Therefore, to speak briefly, when we praise God, what- 
ever be the words used, however prolix, what else do they express but 
this one thing—that adoring we love him, and that loving we adore him ? 
Similarly, when we treat of our misery before him, whatever be the 
words, and however prolix, what do they express but that, from our 
heart, we seek his mercy, and place all our confidence in it? No parts 
of the Scripture are to be counted alien from the office of prayer, since, 
whether by insinuation, or inference, or entreaty, or announcement, all 
parts can infuse the affections of virtue, by means of which we shall 
pray more effectually than by the mere words of prayer. And who can 
enumerate all the virtues of the Psalms? Who can number those igni- 
ted compunctions of holy affections with which the mind that uses them 
is kindled in prayer, when the most grateful sacrifice to God is offered 
up on the altar of the heart ?’’t 

We have already had incidental proof that in the early as in the mid- 
dle ages, the multitude joined in the choral song of the church.— 


* Intonet omnis homo cantica sacra Deo,” 


is the line of Cosmas Materiensis, in his poem entitled ‘* The Passion 
of the Holy Martyrs,” dedicated to Gregory, the monk of Nonantula, 
and after seven hundred years, discovered among the ancient manu- 
scripts of that abbey.t The people joined in the Psalmody of the cler- 
gy in primitive times.|| St. Cesarius of Arles compelled the laity to 
join with the religious in singing in the church the divine office, the 


* S. Ambros. Pref. in Psalm. + De Modo Orandi Libellus. 
+ Italia Sacra, tom. i. 3. | Gerbert, de Cantu Sacra, tom. i. 158. 


410 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


psalms and hymns, the proses and antiphons: and in the second Coun- 
cil of Vasens, he entreated the people to assemble in the church at ma- 
tutinal vigils, tierce, sext and nones. In his sermons he exhorts the 
faithful, that, ** despising the bitterness of the world, they would repair 
to the church, where they may receive the sweetness of Christ.’’ Fortu- 
natus says of St. Germain, Bishop of Paris,— 


“ Pontificis monitis clerus, plebs psallit et infans.’’* 


‘‘ My brethren,”’ says St. Ephrem, ‘be assiduous in repairing to the 
places of our assemblies, whether during the night or at sun-rise, or du- 
ring the day ; whoever you be, of whatever rank, of whatever sex, of 
whatever condition, hasten to assist at the celebration of the divine mys- 
teries.”’t Not only clerks, but also laymen, used to meet daily to assist 
at the divine office,t unprevented by the hours of secular life. St. 
Gregory Nyssen relates in the life of his sister, St. Macrina, that after 
supper and a familiar conversation with his sister, he went to the church 
to return thanks to God at the vesper service—for every one used to go 
to the church at that hour, which the Greeks called émarvyruos. The 
English Fathers of the Council of Cloveshoe, in the eighth century, re- 
quired the faithful laity to assist at the divine psalmody in the church. 
They call it a medicine for the soul ; and they add, * although some one 
may be ignorant of the Latin words, yet he should supplicantly refer 
the intention of his heart to those things which are to be asked of God. 
And after the offices, such a person ought to pray secretly in Saxon, 
for mercy and remission of his sins, and for the repose of the dead.”’| 
The early canons required the faithful to assist at vespers as well as at 
mass. In one church at Lugano I observed it was a custom for laymen 
to go into the choir, and sing the canonical hours like monks. In Vero- 
na there were five oratorios, where many youths used to assemble on 
festivals to recite the hours of the Blessed Mary, after which the Gos- 
pel would be explained to them by a priest. Young women, in the 
castles of our ancestors, used to follow the advice of St. Jerome, when 
he requires that a daughter should recite the hours of matins, tierce, sext, 
nones, and that with lighted tapers she should offer the vesper sacrifice.** 
Indeed, the intention of the church is sufficiently seen in the indulgences 
which she bestows on all the faithful who assist at matins and lauds, 
and at the first and second vespers, as also at the lesser hours of Christ- 
mas,tt and Corpus Christi.{{ At the consecration of the Church of St. 
Mary at Ferentinum, in the year 1191, the office began in the evening, 
at which assisted a great multitude of laics as well as clergy from Cam- 
pagna and the Maritime Provinces. The people remained without the 
church during the night, watching the relics, which were under illumi- 
nated tents, and singing ** Hee est vera fraternitas.’’ On all sides a 
song, and a jubilation of laymen and of women, never ceased throughout 
the whole night.|}|} 

In one of the Capitularies which Dacherius brought to light after ly- 
ing in dust for more than eight hundred years, we read as follows:—‘ It 


* Tn lib. 11. Car. 101. + Serm. iv. 


+ Joan, Devot. Instit. Canon. lib. ii. tit. iv. 1. \| Can. Q7. 
§ Italia Sacra, v. 664. ** Epist. lvii. Tt Sixt. V. Bref. 1586. 


$+ Urban V. 1264, Martin V. 1429. \\\| Italia Sacra, i. 675. 


AGES OF FAITH, 411 


is to be intimated, that the appropriate responses should be said to the 
sacerdotal salutations; for not only clerks and priests, dedicated to God, 
should offer the response, but all the devout people ought to answer 
with consonant voice.’’* By several councils in the time of Charle- 
magne it was decreed that a ‘laic in the church should repeat the psalms 
and responses, but not the allelujah.’”’t ‘The people, as we see in Cath- 
olic countries at present, knew the psalms by heart. ‘* Facile psalmi 
memoria retinentur,” says Nicetius, ‘si frequenter psallantur. In 
psalmis Christi sacramenta cantantur.’’{ An affecting instance of this 
knowledge is presented in the history of Spain. When the Catholic 
army under Ferdinand and Isabella entered Moclin in solemn state, with 
the standard of the cross borne in the advance, they were accompanied 
by a band of priests and friars, with the choir of the royal chapel, chaunt- 
ing the hymn “Te Deum Laudamus.” As they were moving through 
the streets in this solemn manner, every sound hushed excepting the 
anthem of the choir, they suddenly heard, issuing as it were from under 
ground, a chorus of voices, chaunting the words * Benedictum qui venit 
in nomine Domini.” ‘The procession paused in wonder. ‘The voices 
were those of Christian captives, who were confined in subterraneous 
dungeons. ‘he heart of Isabella was greatly touched ; she ordered the 
captives to be drawn forth from their cells; and then these poor crea- 
tures came forth, wasted by hunger, half naked, and in chains. Many 
of them were brave knights who had been wounded and made prisoners 
in the defeat of the Count of Cabra. 

It must be acknowledged that this familiarity of the people with the 
ecclesiastical offices, is a fact in the history of the middle ages of which 
many modern readers may not have been prepared to hear: for undoubt- 
edly, in latter times, after so long a period has elapsed since the removal 
of the blessed source of light and warmth, when the public mind and 
manners have been so estranged from the supernatural tone of faith, 
when the only thirst recognised is for delusive streams, when the only 
provision made is for mere material interests,—men lose all personal ac- 
quaintance with the sublime and beautiful liturgy of the church; and in 
compliance with their weakness, the solemn proses, the venerable hymns, 
are either omitted altogether, or else passed over in haste, as something 
frivolous or obsolete, in which there is no interest taken. ‘There remain 
but a few men, lovers of antiquity, in whose minds the idea of the divine 
office is mingled with a certain Virgilian sadness, as if it were a thing 
that had been; and who cannot but feel in some degree the affliction of 
the prophet when he cried, ‘* How is the gold obscured, the best colour 
changed !”” « Dispersi sunt lapides sanctuarii in capite omnium platea- 
rum.’’ But some estimate may be formed of what existed in ages of 
faith, from what we find in countries wholly Catholic at present, where 
is still fulfilled the prayer of the church in the benediction of the paschal 
candle—that in which she desires that her courts may resound with the 
great voice of the people. Mabillon speaks of many secular men, kings 


* Capitulare Ahytonis Episcop. Basiliensis iii. Spicileg. tom. vi. 
T Concil. Mogunt. c. 9, Capitul. 49, 1. 5. Capitul. 136. Heraldi Turon. 10, c. 105, 
p- 7. Burchard, c. 87, 1. 8. 
Nicetius Episcop. de Psalmodie Bono, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. iii. 


412 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


and nobles, who used, like Alfred and St. Louis, to recite the breviary 
every day.* ‘The young and old, the poor and rich, persons of both 
sexes and of all conditions, used to know these compositions by heart, 
and would love to return to them with the course of the ecclesiastical 
year, and to sing them with the utmost fervour, uttering so ready and so 
cordial an «* Amen,”’ as plainly spoke a personal and profound convic- 
tion of their justice. In fact, for many natures, the soul being imbued 
with the melody of the different Catholic hymns, psalms, and proses, 
was thought to be an essential part of education, and almost as impor- 
tant as a knowledge of the catechism; for, as the ancients held that it 
was necessary to be a musician to understand the Timeus of Plato, so 
it seemed that, without a knowledge of music, the philosophy of the 
Catholic Church could not be understood. The truth is, that with our 
fathers, domestic or patriarchal had not superseded Catholic and Christ- 
ian manners; the dividing and appropriating spirit had not destroyed 
that of diffusion; men had not become so formed to habits of savage 
ferine seclusion as to make their hearths their altar; the entertainments, 
the conversations of their domestic circle, were not dearer to them than 
the public offices of religion; the festival had not yielded to the banquet, 
nor the benediction to the amusements of evening society. ‘The churches 
being the assemblies most generally and dearly loved, careful and curi- 
ous provision was made for the edification of the laity, by maintaining 
the solemn office unmaimed, and by celebrating them as the church pre- 
scribed. In those grave times, when men deeply felt the utter incom- 
patibility of reverence with levity, offices, however rapidly recited, were 
not mutilated or passed over in an inarticulate and confused manner. 
For no man, vested in sacred or any public dignity, could then have 
been accused of forming an exception to the general character of the 
human race, as we find it designated by Homer, when he speaks of 
HEporwry avSpdzur. ‘he words read by the priest for all were, as Ma- 
billon observes, to be pronounced aloud, that those who assisted could 
hear them.t In places the farthest removed from centres of faith and 
fervour, the offices were still celebrated according to the universal cus- 
tom of the church—for it was the desire of the holy and fervent, not that 
of the scornful and indifferent, which was consulted during the middle 
ages; on account of which judgment, let no one attach blame to former 
guides, since it was an evidence of their wisdom to reject the policy that 
would require things to be reduced to the lowest standard, in order to 
please the weakest. To prove this, we need only observe how the 
Creator himself deals with men; for the beauty and the magnificence of 
the natural world, which are also a sacred scripture, or a kind of holy 
office, are not proportioned to the capacities of children, but it is only 
as men approach to the highest cultivation of which their intelligence is 
susceptible, that they can fully appreciate them. By adhering uniformly 
to the Roman offices, the strong were supplied with the nourishment 
appropriate to the wants of their intelligence, without neglecting the 
interests of the weak: for besides that their particular wants could easily 
be supplied, it was well known that they are always attracted and 
pleased by meeting with what contains more than they can fully master, 


* Prefat. in vi. Secul. Bened. 6. + De Studiis Monast. 


AGES OF FAITH. 413 


in the same manner as children are ravished at the works and voice of 
nature. It is not merely the expert swimmer who loves to behold the 
ocean stream; children too are delighted when they look down upon 
its profound abyss, and listen to its foaming tide. So do the humble 
and illiterate contemplate with awe the mystic solemnities of the church, 
and in an ecstasy of the most sweet imprisonment, listen to her lofty 
song. 

In conformity with these principles, the divine offices were not merely 
celebrated in cathedrals and monasteries, but also in all churches, from 
the sixth century. The canons of the Council of Lyons, in the year 
475, commanded clerks who should be in villages to assist at matins. 
It was decreed in the year 787, in England, by a council, that every 
church should discharge its course of canonical hours with reverence ; 
and King Edgar, in the tenth century, decreed that the bells should be 
tolled at the regular hours to give notice to the people. ‘The same cus- 
tom prevailed in France,—‘so far,’ adds Mabillon, « were the laity of 
those ages from considering it a proof of great religion to hear a mass 
on days of obligation.”* In fact, so habituated were the laity to find 
consolation and assistance in the regular offices of the church, that 
when, to meet the exigencies of evil days, a new order arose, illustrious 
for the sanctity and learning of its members, but so instituted as to be 
obliged to abandon their public celebration for active combat, the fact of 
its having churches without choirs was adduced as a serious charge 
against it; and that, not by the religious of the ancient orders who ad- 
hered to them, but by secular magistrates and lawyers, speaking in the 
name of the lay society.t St. Cesarius, of Arles, on account of the 
number of laymen who used to come to matins and to complin, used to 
recite homilies and passages from the sacred Scriptures and from the pas- 
sions of the martyrs. From the ninth century we find, in the books of 
every age, that the acts of St. Stephen, which, according to the Roman 
ritual, were alone read at mass, are given in the vulgar tongue; for, 
after having been read in Latin, they used to be sung in the vulgar lan- 
guage to the people.{ It is a favourite opinion with those who feel no 
regret for the abandonment of ancient discipline, that the devotional 
assiduity of men in the churches in the middle ages, was not combined 
With spiritual piety, or the habit of mental prayer. On referring, how- 
ever, to the books of that time, we find this opinion has no other foun- 
dation but the abuse to which the best institutions are always liable. 
Constant allusion is made to the maxim of St. Augustin, ‘* Non clamans 
sed amans cantat in aure Dei.’’ It was the edict of the blessed Bene- 
dict, «* Sic stemus ad psallendum ut mens nostra concordet voci nostre. 
Non in clamosa voce,” saith he, ‘sed in puritate cordis et compunc- 
tione lacrymarum nos exaudiri sciamus.’’||—‘* Prayer is of the heart, 
not of the lips,” says Hugo of St. Victor;§ who, on the other hand, 
shows elsewhere that the psalmody and long offices of the choir 
are not on that account to be blamed, but to be animated with the 
fervour of internal love.** The remembrance of having pronounced 


* Disquisit. de Cursu Gallicano, + Pasquier Recherches de la France, liv. iii. 44. 

t Gerbert, de Cantu Sacra, i. 390. | In Regul. c. 20. 52, 

§ De Anima, lib. ili. cap.29.  ** Annot. Elucid. Allegor. in Mattheum, lib. ii. 2. 
2K2 é 


414 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


one verse without a firm attention during the office of matins, upon 
which he was then meditating in the church, according to his custom, 
after singing it with the clergy, was sufficient to induce Raynaldus, 
Archbishop of Ravenna, to recommence it from the beginning; which 
devout exercise detained him till the break of day. ‘This was in the 
beginning of the fourteenth century.* 

‘‘In the ecclesiastic song, we do not regulate our judgment by the 
rules of the theatre,’”’ says Cardinal Bona, following St. Jerome; ‘so 
that if there be any child with an indifferent voice, yet if he has good 
works, he is a sweet singer before God.’’ <‘* Alas!” cries St. Augustin, 
‘quam multi sonant voce, et corde muti sunt! Cantat Deo, qui vivit 
Deo.” 

The celestial music consists in the contemplation of God, in exulta- 
tion of mind, and in immortality of body. ‘Neither sweet music,” 
says the wise Ascetic, ‘‘nor hymns, nor holy books, nor beautiful trea- 
tises, nor the presence of good men, nor of devout brethren, can profit 
much when we are deserted by grace, and left to our own poverty.” 
‘<The prayer of the mouth,’’ says Louis of Blois, ‘‘is like the straw ; 
and that of the heart is the grain. ‘These two joined together are fay- 
ourably heard by God.’’t Another spiritual writer, exhorting the novi- 
ces, when assisting at the divine offices, to cherish the most fervent 
devotion, in imitation of the angelic hierarchy, adds, ‘‘ For all acts, if 
viewed of themselves, separated from elevation of mind, are like dead 
bodies lying on the ground; but if that spirit of life, which the mind can 
receive from God, begins to blow, then instantly they rise, and declare 
the glory of God.”’t We read in the canons of Crodogang, that * the 
singers must be humble and devout men,” **quorum melodia animos 
populi circumstantis ad memoriam amoremque celestium non solum sub- 
limitate verborum, sed etiam suavitate sonorum, que dicantur erigat.””|| 

The most express and minute rules were given to regulate the exter- 
nal behaviour in the churches. The canons of the Synod of Risbach, in 
the diocese of Ratispon, held in the year 799, commence with these 
words, ‘*In ede sacra ne strepunto; ne ambulanto; ante finem rei divine 
ne excedunto.”’§ The decrees of Crodogang descend to such particular 
details, as to direct their censure against those loathsome guttural feats, 
which the Easterns hold in horror, though at present in the most civil- 
ized nations of the West they are practised every where with effrontery. 
In this prohibition one discovers the gentle courtesy of the middle ages, 
for the words of the canon are, ‘‘ut infirmis mentibus non vertatur in 
nauseam.’’** Speaking unnecessarily in the Church subjected offend- 
ers to heavy ecclesiastical censures in the middle ages as well as in prim- 
itive times.tt ‘*'T'o external reverence in the Church,” says Cardinal 
Bona, ‘‘belong the keeping a watch upon the senses, the composition 
of the outward man, the tone of voice, gravity of manner, decency of 
habit, and the observance of all ceremony and prescribed rite; that the 
knees be bent, that we stand, sit, rise again, and incline as the occasion 


* Italia Sacra, i. 383. + Instit. Spirit. c. 8. 
t P. Joan, a Jesu Maria Instruct. Novehorum, iii. 1, 
|| Crodogangi Regula Canonic. cap. 50, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. i. 
§ Germania Sacra, tom. ii. 110. 
** Reg. Can. cap. 15, apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. i. ++ Concil. Gradens. 


AGES OF FAITH. 415 


requires, that nothing may appear which can offend the beholders.” 

Cassian t and St. Benedictt sanction the custom of sitting humbly ri 
modestly in the Church, when the occasion permits. In the decrees 
collected by Ives de Chartres, we read that the clergy are to teach the peo- 
ple to kneel at mass during Lent; but that on Sundays and festivals no 
knee should be bent from eve to eve, but that all were to pray standing, 
according to ancient discipline attested by Tertullian,|| and St. Ireneus,§ 
and enforced by the Council of Nice,** which had never been interrupt- 
ed in monasteries: Paul, the deacon, speaking of the monks of Monte 
Casino, expressly mentions that they never bent the knee at the public 
office on Sundays, nor on any day between Easter and Pentecost.tt ‘The 
custom of resting one knee only on the earth is denounced in this collec- 
tion, as having an indecorous resemblance with the act of the Jews who 
mocked our Lord.tt In the tenth century, during the canon of the mass, 
men lay prostrate on the earth; but towards the period of the great out- 
break of heresy in the fifteenth century, the piety of men became so 
cold, that one bishop published ten days of indulgence to those, who 
should remain at mass until the end, and his successor continued it to 
all truly penitent and confessed, provided they remained on their knees 
from the elevation of the holy Eucharist to the elevation of the chalice: 
so languid was the piety of that time.||| No one instructed in the phi- 
losophy of the ages of faith, was disposed to consider such injunctions 
as frivolous. ‘* Harmony in the body,” says Plato, ‘‘appears always 
to be adjusted for the sake of sympathy in the soul.’’§§ «They who 
pray,’ says St. Augustin, ‘fashion their limbs in accordance with the 
act of supplication when they bend their knees, or extend their hands, or 
prostrate themselves on the ground, although their invisible will and in- 
tention of heart be known to God, and he does not want these signs that 
the human mind may be revealed to him, yet by them, man excites him- 
self more to pray and groan humbly and fervently, and I know not how, 
while these movements of the body must have been preceded by a 
movement of the mind, nevertheless by means of the external and visi- 
ble act, the internal and invisible is increased, and thus what preceded 
is augmented by what follows.” It was but natural that before the 
invention of printing, the use of books by the people in the churches 
should not have been general. In the fifteenth century, a prayer-book 
for the use of the people in England, entitled the Festival, resembling 
those at present in use, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde. The Psal- 
ter, the Gospels, the Acts, as also all the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, 
for the whole year, were translated into English, by Richard, a religious 
hermit, in the reign of King Henry II. The archives of the churches 
of St. Severin, at Bordeaux, of Senlis, Laon, and Rheims, make mention 
of missals which were enclosed in an iron cage attached to a pillar in 
the nave, so that the hand could enter through the bars to turn over the 
pages. Many of the ae who repeated the office, knew most of it by 


* De Div, Psal. 491. f bibs inies 12; + Cap. 9, 
ll De Orat. c. 23. § Fragm. #e ©, 20; 
tt Chronic. S. Monast. Casinens. Epist. ad Carolum Regem. 

{} Ivonis Camot. Decret. pars iv. c. 36. 

Il Mabillon, Prefat. in v. Secul. Bened. § 6. §§ De Repub. lib. x. 
4G De Cura | pro Mortuis. 


416 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


heart; others had manuscript leaves to assist their memory. When the 
emperor of Germany took leave of King Charles V. of France, at Paris, 
Christine de Pisan says, that he begged that he would give him one of 
his books of hours, saying that he would pray to God for him. ‘The 
king presented him with two, one little, the other great.* The prayer- 
book of Charles-le-Chauve, which with his Bible, is in the king’s library, 
at Paris, is bound richly, covered with precious stones, and in bas-re- 
liefs in ivory of the most curious workmanship. In the chapel of the 
Castle of St. Ouen, belonging to the knights of the Order of the Star, 
founded by King John, there was a book for their use in French prose, 
which is noticed in the catalogue of the library of Charles V.t In the 
library of Plasantia, may be seen the Psalter of the Empress Engel- 
berge, wife of Louis II. written with her own hand in the year 847. 
How early the use of devotional manuscripts prevailed in secular life, 
may be found attested even on the ancient sepulchres, as on that affect- 
ing tomb which faces the monument of Dagobert, in the Abbey of St. 
Denis, where a young princess is represented in the attitude of death, 
with her poor little book of hours pressed against her bosom. The ro- 
sary, however, was the most ordinary devotion of the people in a devout 
and meditative age, when men had leisure for contemplation. This 
was not instituted by the Venerable Bede, as the English word beads has 
led some to suppose, for in the English councils the Latin word beltedus 
is used, which Ducange derives from the Saxon word, belt. ‘There is 
something which remarkably evinces the spirit of the middle ages in the 
advice, which we find given to assist men at their devotion and to nour- 
ish the fervour of their piety. The Church herself prays that what we 
cannot celebrate with worthy minds, we may, at least, attend with hum- 
ble service.t ‘* When cold in prayer,” says one writer, ‘consider how 
many servants of God are then at their prayers, shedding tears of devo- 
tion, in forest cells and monasteries, and in the basilica of the martyrs, 
and do you now in spirit join yourself to them.’’| To this refers also 
what St. Ignatius calls the prelude of composition of place, as when men 
were told to imagine themselves actually present at the different scenes 
recorded in the Gospel. In the history of Leopold, Archduke of Aus- 
tria, son of the Emperor Ferdinand II. there is given an account of his 
private papers, in which he drew up certain rules for his devotions. In 
the manner of assisting at mass, he says, ‘At the Gospel, I will listen 
to the words as if they proceeded from the mouth of Jesus Christ and 
were addressed to me alone.’’? Thee too, Leopold of Tuscany, among 
the worthies of antique days, let this humble page commemorate, whom 
in the church of the Annunciata, at Florence, I beheld on the festival of 
the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin: for when at solemn mass the book 
of the Gospels was brought to thee after the deacon had read there- 
from, lowly sinking on thy bended knees, thou didst kiss it devoutly, 
and then with palms inverted hide thy face, at which moment I remark- 
ed some cheeks down which stole a tear. That going up to the offer- 
ing at mass, was a solemn and impressive thing which the people in 
many places have been unwilling to abandon. St. Emanuel, Bishop of 


* Livre de Faiz, &c. lib. iii. c. 45. + Lebeuf, Hist. du Diocése de Paris, tom. iii. 
+ Prayer of S. S. Perpetua and Felicitas. | Thom. a Kemp. Epist. 


AGES OF FAITH. 417 


Cremona, in the year 1170, celebrating mass, and refusing to receive 
the oblations of those who came up to the offering wearing long hair 
like women, the men who were rejected, retired to the door, and cut off 
their hair with their knives or swords, rather than suffer such a_ priva- 
tion for its sake.* Similarly it was the basilica of St. Peter, at Spoleto, 
which was made to attest the solemn act of the citizens, who on giving 
themselves to the pontiff, cut off their hair and beards, being the first 
of the Longobards to renounce that ancient distinction of their race.t 
The distribution of blessed bread among all who assisted at high 
mass, which each house in the parish used to offer in turn, was another 
ancient rite, originating in the eulogia, which was the surplus of bread 
offered by the faithful for the altar, that was blessed by the priest, and 
distributed to all who did not communicate, and to children.t The 
names of the offerers were inserted in diptychs and recited from the 
altar.|| ‘Thus Dagobert is related to have given many things to the 
churches, in order that on Sundays and festivals his name might be in- 
scribed in the book of life.§ We find the names of Otho the Great, and 
of his wife Adelheid, of Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, and of Otho’s 
brother William, Archbishop of Mayence, of the sons of Otho, and of 
forty-four other persons, nobles and religious in the ancient diptych of 
the monastery of St. Maximin at Treves. In Italy where the young 
are so exquisitely formed and endowed with such a refined and spiritual 
look, having lines so beautifully pencilled that their countenances re- 
semble those of angels in the paintings of Guido the Bolognese, one must 
be often struck with the tender piety evinced by poor children in the 
churches: and methinks it explains somewhat of the middle ages to be- 
hold these innocents, with garments so rough, and figures so soft and 
delicate, praying by themselves with the utmost fervour and recollection. 
It appears that great care was employed in excluding from the Churches 
whatever might distract the minds of the people; for which purpose 
there was a multitude of minor clerks employed who had not strictly or- 
ders. In early days, the danger of interruption from the pagans, made 
the porters of great consequence. When Pope St. Cornelius was elected 
in 254, the Roman Church had forty-four priests and one hundred and 
eight ministers. he proportion of the latter increased since the time of 
Constantine, and for five hundred years the churches were magnificent- 
ly served. By many decrees, as that of the Council of Salzbourg, in 
the year 1386, the penalty of suspension was to be incurred by such of 
the clergy as failed in paying due attention to the condition of the vest- 
ments, ornaments, and sacred vessels of the altar.** To preserve the 
Cathedral of Pientina in its original beauty, Pius II. its founder, publish- 
ed a decree in the year 1362, pronouncing the severest censures on any 
one who should violate the whiteness of the walls and columns.tt Fleu- 
ry and Chardon remark, that the saints of the early ages, in attending 
with such care to external things, were not occupied about trifles. 
They understood the importance of preserving the beauty of the place, 
the silence, decorum, order of the discipline, and the majesty of the 


* Italia Sacra, tom. iv. 605. - ibed 

{ Thommassinus de Vet. et. Nov. Ecclesie Disciplin. pars iii. lib. i. 14. 

|| Saga de Diptychis Veterum, cap. 4. § Duchesne, tom. i. Scripta France. 
** German. Sacra, tom. ii. 462. tt Italia Sacra, i. 1179, 


Vor. [1.53 


418 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ceremonies. Services of this nature were not then delegated to vulgar 
hirelings of ferocious manners, but to spiritual persons in whom meek- 
ness sweetened duty. Women were never to approach the altar to dis- 
charge any ministry.* By the Council of Chalons in 650, as by many 
others, no one wearing arms was to presume to enter the church. ‘* We 
who are always surrounded with the arms of legitimate empire,” says 
Theodosius the younger, ‘and who should be constantly attended by 
an armed company, nevertheless when about to enter the temple of God, 
leave our weapons outside.’”” The Council of Slengastad, however, ad- 
mitted of one exception in favour of the king. At the time when the 
Normans were in military possession of the country, Count Rodulf, one 
of their chieftains, came to the Abbey of Monte Casino with the inten- 
tion of taking the abbot prisoner, yet on entering the church he left his 
arms as usual, says the chronicle, outside, of which the servants of the 
abbey proceeded to take an advantage that could only be excused by 
the danger of their position.t In like manner when Desiderius, a young 
prince of Beneventum, came there with his company, we read that the 
servants were left outside the door, ostensibly for the sake of guarding 
the swords and horses, though in reality it was to provide for the escape 
of the prince, through a postern in the church, in order to accomplish 
his desire of embracing the monastic habit. When in the year 1406, 
at Paris, some serjeants had seized during the divine office in the Church 
of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, a criminal who had retired there, the di- 
vine service instantly ceased, and interdicts were fulminated which were 
not loosened until the sentence of reparation had been passed. In the 
book before the last, we had occasion to revert to the law and custom 
of asylums, for in the middle ages, we read of men taking sanctuary 
where now they take vengeance. Who is not moved at hearing that 
in times of the greatest disorder and misery, there was always one city 
of refuge, which never beheld the horrid images of war, where no gentle 
loving spirit was constrained to recoil in terror :— 


TapBious Yarxov 7, 2 AOHOY innvoyarTnY 
Sewvov Gn’ axporarns XOPVSOS vEevovta, v07005,|| 


where no one, however daring, was ever seen even to enter xexopuSpévos 
aisone zurxe 3 for the act of Philippe-le-Bel, who entered the Church of 
Notre Dame on horseback, on returning to Paris after his victory in 
Flanders, was like a sinister omen of future impiety, and only in char- 
acter with the tyrant, who had pushed his sails into the temple and spa- 
red not even Christ’s vicar in his wrath. The reverence due to the sa- 
cred mysteries was accurately stated and strictly maintained. It was 
reserved for the faithful of later times to behold in their sanctuaries the 
boasting of those who hate God in the midst of his solemnity—* Et glo- 
riati sunt qui oderunt te in medio solemnitatis tue.’’§ ‘Consider, my 
beloved,”’ says St. Ephrem of Edessa, ‘* with what fear those stand be- 
fore the throne, who wait ona mortal king. How much more does it be- 
hoove us to appear before the heavenly King with fear and trembling, and 
with awful gravity.”’** «* Here were,” as St. Chrysostom says, ‘“ great- 


* Ivonis Carnot. Decret. pars ii. c. 135. 
+ Chronic. S. Monast. Casinensis, lib. ii. c. ‘71. + Id. lib. iii. c. 2. 
} Il. vi. 469. § Ps xiii. ** Paren. xix. 


AGES OF FAITH. 419 


er symbols than the holy of holies contained, for here was not the cher- 
ubim—here were not the urn and the manna, and the tables of stone, 
and the rod of Aaron, but the body and blood of our Lord.’”’* «Truly 
tremendous,”’ he cries, ‘are the mysteries of the church—truly tremen- 
dous are our altars.”’t ‘The custom of standing during the divine offices 
is indicated in the name given to the wooden recesses in the choir of 
collegiate churches, though at the lessons all were permitted to be seat- 
ed, after the example of Christ among the doctors; and holy men speak- 
ing of this practice, remark the saying of Aristotle, that by sitting and 
resting, the mind becomes wise.t A very ancient inscription which 
was formerly on the steps of the pontifical chair in the Church of the 
Vatican, proves that it was the custom at Rome, in remote times, as it 
still continues to be in many countries, for the men to be placed on one 
side of the church and the women on the other. || Every emergency is 
provided for by canonists respecting the celebrating of the Christian mys- 
teries. Ifa priest in saying mass should drop dead or be taken ill, so 
as to be unable to proceed, and if this should happen before the conse- 
cration, the mass was not to be continued by another priest; but if it be 
after the consecration, the mass was to be finished by another priest, 
though he should not be fasting, in order that the mysteries might not 
be left imperfect; for the ecclesiastical precept which enjoins the fast 
was to give way to the necessity of completing the sacrifice. As the 
canon says, ‘‘ Since we are all one in Christ, the diversity of persons 
forms no contrariety.”’ If the church should be violated or polluted, be- 
fore the canon, the mass was to be interrupted, if after it, to be comple- 
ted. Ifthe advance of an enemy, or the breaking in of a flood, or any 
ruin should occasion imminent danger, before the canon, the mass was 
to be suspended, if after the consecration, the priest was hastily to re- 
ceive the body and blood. If an enemy of the Christian religion should 
threaten the priest with death, unless he brake off the mass, the canon- 
ists said, that the priest was bound to continue, though at the risk of his 
life, whether it be before or after the consecration. Pope Gregory VII. 
being wounded on the head by an assassin, who favoured King Henry, 
as he said mass on the night of Christmas, did not descend from the al- 
tar until he had finished the mass which he had begun. But there were 
some occasions when it was held necessary to break off the mass, even 
after the consecration, as when a dying child was to be baptized, or any 
one was to be confessed and administered, being at the point of death, 
who otherwise might have died without the sacraments.§ 

On the festival of St. Michael, as the Christians were assembled in 
the Island of More, and St. Francis Xavier was at the altar saying mass, 
a violent earthquake came on in the middle of the sacrifice. The peo- 
ple in the utmost terror fled out of the church, but the saint remained at 
the altar and finished the sacred mysteries. The barbarians were lost 
in astonishment on beholding a man who remained immovable, while 
the rocks and the mountains trembled, and they judged him to be 
divine.** The Archduke Leopold, of Austria, son of the Emperor Fer- 


eee" 


* Tn Pe exeainn + Hom. 46. } Physic. 7, 
| Pauli Aringhi Roma Subterranea, p. 117. 
§ Bened. XIV. de Sacrif. Misse, sect. 2. 105—118. ** Bouhours i. 203. 


420 MORES CATHOLICI; OR 


dinand II. being at his devotions in a church at Salsfeld, and the artil- 
lery of the enemy beginning to rage, and the balls to fly on all sides, he 
was warned of his danger, but he replied, ‘that no one could injure him 
while he was so near his God.” In the Franciscan convent, at Clonmel, 
in the midst of the choir was the stately monument of Edmund Butler, 
Baron of Cahir, all of marble, with very curious figures and bas relievos. 
That baron being at high mass in the monastery, news was brought 
him that the Earls of Ormond and the Barons of Dunboine, his rela- 
tions, were then ravaging his lands. He was no way discomposed, but 
staid till the mass was finished, and then marching against the invaders, 
defeated them.* Louis XII. on entering a church to hear mass, received 
a letter, which was known to contain news of great importance respect- 
ing the success of his arms. Nevertheless he would not open it until 
the sacrifice was finished. In these ages, men otherwise steeled against 
conscience were found impressed with such a reverence for the churches, 
that they shrunk from the thought of making them the scene of their 
crimes. When Verinna, one of the conspirators in league with Fiesquo, 
proposed to assassinate Andrew and Jannetin Doria, and Adam Centu- 
rione, while they were assisting at mass, the count instantly rejected 
the plan with horror, declaring that he would never consent, for the sake 
of any advantage, to commit such an outrage to the most holy mystery 
of religion. ‘This fact is mentioned by the Cardinal de Retz. © Who 
has not heard the surprising history, relating how the Christian churches 
were respected even by the barbarous invaders of Rome, to which St. 
Augustin, with such eloquence alludes, in comparing them with the 
heathen temples, saying, Ibi amissa, hic servata libertas: ibi clausa, hic 
interdicta captivitas. ‘The basilicas of Christ inspired ferocious barba- 
rians with humility and pity, who then gave a new spectacle to the 
world ?t 

Having now taken a general view of the sacred offices in relation to 
history, in order to complete what we have begun, let us conceive our- 
selves present, and penetrating as it were into the crowd, let us cast a 
contemplative look upon the wondrous and the tender scene. Lo, what 
an assembly is here. This is the blessed vision of peace. It is here 
that the race of men seems amiable. It is here that we feel how near 
they are to God who thus showers down his mercy upon them in the 
midst of his temple. Yes, sweet is the air of temples to those who 
have endured the thirst of the Babylonian exile, to those who have 
wandered sufficiently long in the land of malediction, as to discover how 
tasteless are its fruits, and how void of perfume its most gorgeous flow- 
ers. At the first step on entering this garden of God, it is as if one 
emerged from a withering atmosphere, to feel the healthful and delicious 
breeze of mountains. What a glow of charity suddenly transports the 
heart and revives the fancy, though joy and hope had before seemed 
dead. No distrustful, or malignant, or inquisitive looks cause you to | 
feel yourself a stranger, for it seems to be here as it is in Paradise, 
where the blessed hail each new arrival, crying,— 


“Lo one arrived 
To multiply our loves.”} 


* Monast. Hiber. 277. + De Civitate Dei, lib, i. c. 4. 6. t Dante, Par. v. 


AGES OF FAITH. 421 


Unnumbered are the wretched men possessing lofty souls tortured by 
the feeling of isolation, and afflicted with wnutterable anguish at the 
thought of remaining for ever unknown. They thirst after society—after 
communion with congenial intelligences. What society then can be 
found so amiable, so inspiring, so full of all consolation, and of all reme- 
dies for human misery, as that of the faithful in the house of God? They 
wish to be entreated, and that their presence may be sought for, but 
what more noble invitations or more worthy of all acceptation can they 
receive than those which are made to all the faithful in a Catholic city, 
when they are entreated to come, rich men and beggars, in such com- 
posed and seemly fellowship, as would become the fair equality of the 
golden world, to honour the memory of some friend of God in the 
church which has invoked him? ‘The feasts of secular luxury last but 
for a short season. In the divine temples there is an eternal festivity, 
for nothing there is celebrated that passes away, or that hath a shadow 
of change. Eternal is the festival in which, as St. Gregory says, we 
escape from our own mutability by beholding him who is immutable— 
‘‘ Mutabilitatem nostram transcendemus videndo immutabilem.’’* «« From 
that festivity,’ says a great author, ‘there is heard I know not what 
certain sweet song in the ears of the heart, provided the world doth not 
disturb it. This unearthly sound soothes the ear of him who walks in 
the courts of God, who considers the wonders of God in the redemption 
of the faithful; and it leadeth the stag to the fountains of waters. Nev- 
ertheless since as long as we are in the body we are journeying at a 
distance from the Lord, and that the corruptible body weighs down the 
mind, and terrene cares oppress it, if by desires sometimes we come to 
that sound, yet after a while by the weight of our infirmity we fall back 
to our accustomed sorrows. But there we shall always find that in 
which we can rejoice, although here there is never wanting that which 
causes us to mourn. And now transporting ourselves to the neighbour- 
hood of some church in the middle ages, behold what a multitude resorts 
thither. ‘The bell sounding within the lofty tower like the Divine voice, 
calls many. Soon you see the humble crowd winding its way along 
the pious path. It is the poor orphan who spins as she walks; it is 
the blind man who feels his way with his stick; it is the timid beggar 
whose hand holds a rosary; it is the child who caresses each flower as 
he passes by; it is the old man who hastens with feeble steps ;—youth 
and age are the friends of God.’’t 

But ere we proceed further, let us listen to the solemn murmur of 
those bells which invite the faithful :—for though in a former Book, we 
had occasion to speak of them, still one cannot refuse to return, and 
stand awhile, musing at their sound! 

In the life of St. Loup, Bishop of Sens, we read, that when King 
Clothaire heard the bell of St. Stephen, he was so delighted with its 
tone, that he ordered it to be removed to Paris, where he might always 
hear it: and the bells of St. Saviour at Blois sent forth such harmony, 
that when every thing else seemed to fail, they were found to soothe 
that profound melancholy to which Henry III. was subject. In the 


* Hom. ii. lib. i. super Ezech. t De la Martine Harmonies Poetiques, ii. 192. 
+ Bernier, Hist. de Blois, 35. 
2L 


422 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


chronicles of Italy we have another example of attention to the music 
of bells. ‘The Countess Matilda Eurilla, while remaining at Ferrara, 
went to take the diversion of hunting, with spears and nets, in the 
woods near the Benedictine Abbey of St. Bartholomew. Impercepti- 
bly the time passed, till the meridian hour found her exhausted with 
hunger and fatigue. ‘The monks then came out, and with all benignity 
invited her to take refreshment, which she did not refuse. No sooner 
had she set down to table than the bell from the tower emitted a dead 
and abrupt sound, upon which she asked how it came to be split, and 
why it had not been cast afresh, in order that it might give a clearer 
sound, ‘The monks beginning to speak of the poverty of their house, 
she immediately took off her jewels and her gold spurs, which she 
presented to the abbot. The bells were afterwards called by the Ital- 
ians the spur-bells, and a spur was engraven on the brass, with verses 
commemorating her pious liberality.* The office of the bell used to be 
described in these lines: 
“‘ Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum, 
Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro.” 

Inscribed on the bell were generally various solemn lines. Thus on 

one bell of the Cathedral of Strasbourg, you read— 


“ Nuncio festa, metum, nova quedam, flebile lethum ;” 


on another—*O Rex gloria Christe, veni cum pace ;”’ on another— 
“ Vox ego sum vite, voco vos; orate, venite.” 

Each tone had often a distinct object to indicate. Thus there was the 
great and solemn bell exclusively for the high festivals of the Church. 
Of less magnitude was the bell of the Angelus ; the bell to announce the 
opening and termination of the fair; the bell for the retreat; the bell to 
announce the divine offices on ordinary occasions. 'That certain bells 
of the towers were sounded at the elevation, as well as other parts of 
the divine office, in order that the people without the church might be 
excited to prayer, can be collected from a letter of Ives of Chartres, to 
Matilda, Queen of England, thanking her for the present of bells to that 
chureh.t Never can I lose the memory of what I experienced under 
the dome of Florence, when one heard as if on all sides the indistinct 
moaning of that solemn bell. Dugdale relates that Athelwold, abbot of 
Abingdon, in the tenth century, made a wheel which was filled with 
bells, which being sounded on the greater festivals, used to excite the 
devotion of the people. In many churches, as at Strasbourg, there was 
a different musical air executed by the bells three or four times each 
day, besides a peculiar harmony of joy for each of the festivals of Christ- 
mas, Easter, and Pentecost. Celebrated were the bells of Freyburg in 
Brisgau; of St. Stephen at Vienna, which tower was erected by Conrad 
Zaringgen in the twelfth century, of Salzburg, Erfort, Hamburg, Holm, 
Rouen, Lyons, Tours, Paris, and many other places. It required the 
force of sixteen men to sound the great bell of Strasbourg, which meas- 
ured twenty-two feet in circumference. In Italy there were bells weigh-. 
ing twenty-two thousand pounds. 

But we are at the portal; the space before which is entitled the Para- 
dise, either from its intrinsic beauty or from its proximity to the courts 


* Italia Sacra, i. 530. + Epist. exlii. 
I 


AGES OF FAITH. 423 


of heaven,* or from the bodies of the faithful reposing there, as before 
the church of Amalphi.t ‘The whole ground too, as before the cathe- 
dral of Cefalu in Sicily, by the piety of Count Roger,{ and in front of 
the noble church of Salerno, built by Robert Guiscard, was often deep- 
ly covered with holy earth, which had been brought from Jerusalem : 
and in many places, as at Nola, the whole basilica was surrounded with 
sepulchres, urns and inscriptions, redolent of venerable antiquity. At 
the gate of the latter you read these lines— 
‘* Siste gradum, quamvis properes, en siste, viator ; 
Te cogat pietas, religioque loci. 
Quemque Augustinus, Paulinus, Bedaque libris 
Concelebrant, flexo tu venerare genu. 
Ingredere, at mundo corde, et simul excute plantas, 
Sanctorum quando corpora mille premas.”’ 

The inscription at the entrance of the cathedral of Bari in Apulia, ad- 
monished the stranger to imitate the humility of the holy men, Helias and 
Eustachius, who had built and adorned that church, concluding thus:— 

“ His gradibus tumidis ascensus ad alta negatur, 
His gradibus blandis querere celsa datur. 
Ergo ne tumeas, qui sursum scandere queris, 

Sis humilis, supplex, planus, et altus eris.”’|{ 

See these smiling children on the steps, these playful innocents, who 
serve in the temple. See too these devout widows, these humble men, 
who hasten to ascend! Ah! here must be the entrance to joy; here 
we shall have renewed the peaceful beauteous dreams of youth, here we 
shall be reminded of the thoughts of our golden years. For we may re- 
mark that the Church, unlike all that belongs to the world, is never ren- 
dered by age different from what it was found to be at first. It is like a 
treasury, in which all the past joys of men are preserved. ‘The inno- 
cence and delights of youth, the intellectual riches of maturity, are laid 
up in store here, safe and uninjured. No one as he grows old, becomes 
weary of it, but on the contrary, the human heart loves and venerates it, 
if possible, each day, more and more; for while it restores to the mind 
of man all the bloom and fragrance of his first years, all that gave joy to 
his youth, it presents to it in prospect the fulness of joy and pleasure for 
evermore. At the divine altar, the Catholic beholds and possesses what- 
ever has rejoiced his soul in life: he sees the star by which he has 
steered through all the gusts and tides of the world’s mutability. But 
let us enter, passing with timid steps over the threshold; for underneath 
it often lies buried some humble pontiff, like Bartholomew Castelli, who 
caused his body to be placed before the greater door of his cathedral of 
Mazara, in order, as an inscription testified, that it might be trod upon 
by the feet of all,§ an instance similar to which we find at the church 
of St. James of the Spaniards, in Rome, where, through the same hum- 
ble choice and desire of mercy, the body of Bartholomew de la Guera, 
Duke of Albuquerque, and Archbishop of Siponto, lies buried under the 
threshold.** Lo, what a crowd fills the holy place! This is the house 
of the Lord, founded on the tops of the mountains, and exalted above all 
hills ; and all nations come to it, and say, ‘* Glory be to thee, O Lord.” 

We have many records attesting the fulfilment of these words from 


* In Chronic. S. Monast. Casinens. lib. ii. c. 9, note. t Italia Sacra, vii. 226. 
{ Sicilia Sacra, ii. 813, | Italia Sacra, vii. 612. § Sicilia Sacra, ii. ** Id. vii. 860. 


424 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


the history of the ages of faith. Apollinaris Sidonius describes the so- 
Jemn vigil on the feast of St. Justus. «The procession was before light ; 
a vast multitude was there of both sexes, which that capacious basilica 
could not contain.” St. Hugo VI. abbot of Cluny, was obliged to enlarge 
the church of the monastery, as it was not able to contain the crowds that 
resorted to it.* Great was the multitude which the festivals of the mar- 
tyrs, in the first ages, drew from all parts, to the churches which con- 
tained their relics, when, as Theodoret says, our Lord had brought his 
dead into the room and place of the heathen gods, and instead of the 
feasts of Jupiter and Bacchus, were celebrated the festivals of Peter and 
Paul. St. Paulinus enumerates more than twenty cities and provinces 
of Italy, of which the inhabitants came every year with their wives and 
children, in the depth of winter, to honour the memory of one confes- 
sor, St. Felix, in the city of Nola. We may judge what was the con- 
course at Rome on the festivals of St. Hyppolytus, St. Laurence, and 
the Apostles : or at Tours, on that of St. Martin. « At Nola,” says St. 
Paulinus, ‘it is delightful to behold one city enclosing many cities, and 
such multitudes united by one vow. Thither came the people of Lu- 
cania and the Appulian youth, the Calabrians too, and they.from joyful 
Campania, whom rich Capua and beauteous Naples encircle with ample 
walls,—they who cultivate the happy lands of Gales, whom powerful 
Atisia and mother Aricia send. Rome even rejoices to see her sacred 
precincts deserted for the honour of God, while far and wide the issu- 
ing multitude pursues the Appian way. Nor are the rough tops of the 
Latin mountains less thronged, as they whom lofty Praneste, whom 
festive Aquinum nourish, and whom ancient Ardea sends from its bor- 
ders, repair to the festival. hither hasten crowds also from olive-bear- 
ing Venafro; and the hard Samnites leave the mountain towers— 

Vicit iter durum pietas, amor omnia Christi 

Vincit, et alma fides, animisque locisque rigentes 

Suadit acerba pati, simul aspera ponere corda. 

Una dies cunctos vocat, una et Nola receptat, 

Votaque plena suis spatiosaque limina cunctis, 

Credas innumeris ut meenia dilatavit 

Hospitibus, sic Nola assurgit imagine Rome.” + 

St. Gregory of Tours relates, that on the festival of the blessed mar- 
tyr of the church of Brest, a clerk of the abbey of Limoges, coming to 
the festivity, such was the multitude of people, that he could not ap- 
proach to the holy tomb, nor even enter within the church.t In the 
year 1500, one of the articles of the Jubilee at Rouen, requiring assist- 
ance at a solemn mass in its cathedral, that immense church could not 
contain the multitude, so that crowds in deep devotion knelt outside, 
and filled the adjoining streets.| St. Odo says that the church of St. 
Martin at Tours, though of immense size, was too small for the crowds 
that sought to enter, insomuch that the rails of the choir and the gate 
posts used to give way before them; and he adds, «* Quam devotam vio- 
lentiam credo, gratam habet dominusipse Martinus, ad exemplum vide- 
licet Domini sui quem turbe comprimebant.’’§ 
This judgment of the middle ages, according to which an importunate 

crowd was a sublime spectacle, as being a practical evidence, as well 


* Bib. Clun. 457. t Italia Sacra, tom. vi. 248. t Greg. Turon. Mirac. lib. ii. 28. 
| Taillepied, Recueil des Antiq. de Rouen, 230. § De Comb. Basil. Bib. Clun. 146 


AGES OF FAITH. 425 


as a kind of repetition of the facts of the Christian history, has nothing 
to fear from a comparison with the general sentiment of the moderns on 
the same subject; at least where affectionate and philosophic minds are 
to determine the question. ‘The haste of the shepherds and the air of 
the stable were not forgotten on these occasions in Catholic times; nor 
did any one disdain to find himself in contact with the devout multitude, 
which would assuredly, with the same importunity, have pressed upon 
Christ. Being at Loretto, on the festival of the nativity of the Blessed 
Virgin, I could not penetrate within the Santa Casa until late in the 
evening of the second day, when being remarked by one of the guards, 
I was with charitable violence pulled through the more fervent throng. 
Some men come here to inquire and speculate about the origin of ancient 
traditions, but to me, who could not remain insensible to the intention 
of this vast multitude, so visibly impressed with the same tender and 
devout affections, marvellously foolish seem such pains. It was enough 
for me to meditate on what I felt and saw. 
“The air of paradise did fan the house, and angels officed all.” 


Let us remark here what a charm must have been found in the vari- 
ety of characters which composed this multitude. In modern times, after 
such a successive diminution of truths affecting both the spiritual and 
the material hierarchy of society, nothing can be more monotonous than 
an assembly of people. ‘There are the rich, cuirassed in egotism, initi- 
ated in no other rites but those of Bacchus, bred up with the same feel- 
ing of disdain for every outward manifestation of piety and fervour: 
there are the poor, parked in from all observation or contact with 
the rich, thoroughly subdued and moulded into one form of servilely 
servile respect. But in ages of faith it was a very different picture. 
The boundless variety of graces was seen indicated in the members of 
the faithful fold. In fact, what do we still find in Catholic countries 
amidst the pious throng? We find the simple hermit come from his 
woods, the shepherd from the mountains, the young and thoughtful 
clerk, the solemn religious man, the labouring youth, with joy and tri- 
umph in their looks,—all persons dissimilar in habits, in disposition of 
mind, in the cultivation and direction of their intelligence, and yet who 
have one centre and bond of union, the Church; and one model, Jesus 
Christ. ‘Non intrabit in eam aliquod, nisi qui scripti sunt in libro 
vite agni.”” These words seem accomplished here, for before this altar, 
all who are present may be supposed, from their exterior appearance, to 
be either saints who have preserved their white baptismal robe unsullied, 
according to the solemn admonitions of the church, their mother, or else 
penitents who have atoned, or who are atoning, for having stained its 
purity. At times, indeed, may be discovered some awful figure, who 
seems moved, and yet unable to call on Heaven for merey—one like 
those we read about in legendary tales, from whose eye no tear can fall, 
and at whose heart there seems to lie an icy coldness, unrelieved, 
though five thousand voices join to raise the holy hymn, and hearts are 
thrilled, and eyes are filled by that full harmony. But remark well, no 
persons seem to have come here merely to be observed, or to comply 
with a mechanical habit. ‘Thus there is a common office, but there are 
particular wants; and therefore, while the priest chaunts aloud at the 
altar, the internal desire of innumerable hearts are sent up to heaven. As 

Vor. I].—54 2L2 


426 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Pope Benedict XIV. remarks, the object of the secret prayers is beauti- 
fully expressed by the Church in the secret of the mass on the fifth Sun- 
day after Pentecost. ‘* Ut quod singuli obtulerunt ad honorem nominis 
tui, cunctis proficiat ad salutem.’’ How deeply interesting is it, in the 
assembly of a church in some vast metropolis, to detect the man of inte- 
rior life, the devout contemplatist, the hermit, who on these occasions 
comes abroad to mix in the throng of men,—to see in the church the 
devout student, whom nothing but the office could tear from his books, 
the holy recluse, who may be looked for elsewhere in vain! there he 
kneels, with hands crossed upon his breast, and eyes raised to the altar, 
as the spirit of Nino appeared to Dante,— 
** Both palms joined and raised, 

Fixing its steadfast gaze toward the East, 

As telling God, I care for naught beside.” * 
Where he comes from, no one knows; and when the office is at an end, 
he will be lost in the retiring crowd, and be seen no more! 

What a solemn and moving spectacle is that of the devout female sex 
in the churches! Dante had in his mind’s eye many a living image, 
familiar to those who visit them, when he drew that touching portrait 
in the vision of Paradise: 

‘“‘Lo! where Anna sits, so well content to look 
On her lov’d daughter, that with moveless eye 
She chaunts the loud hosanna.”’+ 

It is like a demonstration of the divinity which presides over all the 
Catholic offices, to mark the universality of that intense affection with 
which they are loved by women—those fairest and best of creatures, to 
whom God hath given intelligence on earth, who turn their steps, or at 
least their hearts, to the Catholic altar, whether in joy or sorrow, in 
sickness or in health, like the innocent child, who always runs thither 
for succour where he trusteth most. 

If to behold the divine beauty of the human countenance be at all 
times sweet to minds contemplative, where can this pleasure be enjoyed 
so fully as in the church! ‘There raptures of love mixed with sorrow, 
at the solemn moment of communion, give a sublime expression to the 
countenance. ‘That of joy, as has been acutely remarked by Gerbet, is 
seldom sublime ; for joy is so fugitive and false a thing, that it seems to 
communicate to the human face somewhat of the air of insanity: grief, on 
the contrary, almost always enobles the countenance. The instinct, how- 
ever, of our primitive destiny, wounded by this contrast, seeks another 
dignity besides that of sorrow. ‘The true condition of man is the repara- 
tion of his misery ; and his form never appears clothed in its most beau- 
tiful terrestial character, excepting when it takes the expression of this 
mystery of sorrow and grace, when it receives the imprint of a divine 
joy, penetrating to the abyss of our sufferings. | 

Let no one esteem it puerile, if, when treating on the devout assem- 
blies of the faithful, I speak of the pleasure and consolation inspired by 
the sight of these holy countenances ; for doubtless some assistance was 
rendered to virtue, by the mere fact of men being generally accustomed 
to behold them. It was no small advantage, that in the church one could 
always reckon upon meeting, from time to time, with persons who bore 
mn tpg pce a a, 
“ Purg. viii. ¢ Id. xxxii. 


AGES OF FAITH. 427 


the mystic sign that Ezekiel saw upon the foreheads, living monuments 
of infinite almighty grace and power divine. Moreover, in these vast 
basilicas, thronged with innumerable people, upon a festal day, amidst 
the splendour of the saints, each one might avoid all notice, feel himself 
solitary and unobserved by any eye save that of his guardian angel who 
watched over him. There, before the sacramental presence, the poor 
stranger—forgotten and forsaken, in a foreign land, alone in the crowd— 
beholds his one, ancient, and only constant friend, the friend of his 
childhood, the friend of his youth, his friend for eternity. ‘There too 
you will sometimes remark the timid maiden, or some child that recalls 
the image of a divine prototype, who, stealing from observation, drops 
a small piece of money upon the plate after kissing the cross of Christ: 
for in the churches, even children enjoy the privilege of free and volun- 
tary sacrifice. O how mysterious and solemn atthing is it thus to be 
alone in the saintly crowd! to pass as it were a disembodied spirit 
through such a host of ghostly combatants, thirsting after justice and the 
streams of a happier world! ‘The land of malediction ends here. No 
more of its restrictions, of its conventional barriers, of its miscalled so- 
cial forms. ‘The ceremonies of the secular courts would be profanation 
in the church. No one marshals you; no one heeds you. ‘There are 
pillars, behind which you may kneel and weep in secret; there are re- 
tired chapels, in which you may lie prostrate before the blessed sacra- 
ment. The poor walk here freé and favoured, as in presence of nature: 
they can approach to the altars as near as kings, and can enjoy, equally 
with the pomp and glory of nobility, the splendour and loveliness of 
the house of God: for the Church, as St. Chrysostom saith, is the com- 
mon house of all men, in which the priest offers peace in common to all 
immediately on their entering it; and if concord were perfectly preserved, 
he adds, we should have no other house but this. Being, however, far 
removed from the virtue of those who had but one heart and one soul, 
and being separated from each other by houses at least, when we meet 
here, it is requisite to have this intention: for, although in other things 
we may be poor and rich, yet at least when here assembled, it is neces- 
sary that all in common should receive the priests of God with charity, 
and not with the lips alone, but with the mind also, should answer when 
they give us the salutation of peace.* 

Wherever the dignity or order of the sacred assembly required sepa- 
ration, it was not even kings who enjoyed the privilege. Since the first 
overthrow of order in the Gallic land, the mayor of every little town 
desires to have his seat apart within the sanctuary, which, like the sacred 
ark, still from unbidden office awes mankind; but until that epoch, the 
discipline of the first ages prevailed as established by many councils; ft 
and however displeased Milton may have been, we know that St. Am- 
brose would not permit even the emperor to remain in the choir after 
making his offering. In the morning, how bright and splendid is this 
beauteous temple! Every altar beholds the ineffable mystery accom- 
plished. At night-fall, how solemn is the voice of the preacher, echo- 
ing along the dusky aisles, while the deep groan of the hours resounds, 
murmuring through the stillness of the upper vaults !—Remark too what 
a bright yet melancholy gleam, the last of the expiring day, plays upon 


* Hom. xxxiii. in 9 Matt. + Concil. Laod. c. 19; Concil. Trull. c. 69. 


428 MORES CATHOLICI; oR, 


the upper shafts of the lofty columns! How silent and how awful seem 
those distant regions above! At one time all is hushed, and you fear 
almost to breathe. You behold like Dante in the other world, 
“A crowd of spirits silent and devout Ne 
speechless, like CEdipus in the Colonzan forest, allowing nothing to 
escape from their heart but the thought of prayer— 
Apdyews, GrOyas TO Tas 
EVPTMOV GTOuG HpovTLdos 
bévres 
At another, a little way before you, there are perhaps some who sing 
the Miserere in responsive strains. Lo, how many saints stretch their 
closed hands in furtherance of their suit! On this side comes the bright 
Procession of taper-bearing, white-veiled penitents. Now they make 
their solemn halt; and now the tears steal down your cheeks, at the 
thrilling sweetness of that voice which joins the inexpressive song. O 
Christ, how impressive, how blessed a moment is this! ‘Beati qui 
habitant in domo tua, in seculum sexculi laudabunt te.”? «The church,”’ 
says St. Germain, ‘‘is the house of prayer, and a terrestrial heaven in 
which God dwells.” 
“O templum! O templum! O felicia limina cceli! 
Solaque digna Deo ccelicolisque domus! 
Hic dulces resonant melicis concentibus hymni, 
Hic colimus casta religione Deum. 
O vos felices, divinorumque capaces, 
Vos quibus astrorum splendida regna patent, 
Vos quibus arrisit ccelum, jussitque tueri, 
Angelicos vultus, angelicosque choros.” 

“‘ But why,” continues Cardinal Bona, «do I propose the angels to 
excite reverence in those who enter the divine temples? The King of 
angels, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is himself corporeally pres- 
ent in the adorable sacrament of the altar. How terrible then is this 
place, and how worthy of all reverence !” 

Would you hear the language of the middle ages in reference to these 
ineffable mysteries? Children of men, say they, you open the book of 
the divine Scriptures, and you read how Christ the Messiah walked in 
Judea—how he passed through the multitude—how they who sat by the 
way-side, cried out, ‘‘ Jesus, son of God, have mercy on us ’’—how the 
people thronged round, heard, and adored—and you say, ‘* How happy 
the eyes which saw him, and the ears which heard his divine words ag 
Deceive not yourselves ; say rather, ‘ Beati qui non viderunt, et firmiter 
erediderunt.”” Approach—enter the churches, the world of spirits, and 
exercise that faith which has the promise of life eternal; for when 
the mystic train moves through the prostrate multitude of those who 
strike their breasts, while the hymn which rises is sweet as from blest 
voices uttering joy, you have more encouragement—what do we say? 
you have greater evidence—to force you to adore him, in sacramental 
presence, than those men possessed who saw the infant of Bethlehem 
and Jesus of Nazareth in the sorrows and humiliation and passion of his 
humanity. Fall down, then, and adore the Messiah, the celestial King, 
the King of glory; and according to your faith, he will have mercy on 
you. Are you tempted with unholy thoughts? you will be freed from 
them. Are you a child of sorrow, wounded by the stern strokes of a 


AGES OF FAITH. 429 


calamitous life? you will be comforted. Are you discouraged at the 
difficulties of your position—do you hunger and thirst after justice? you 
will be strengthened and refreshed. Mark and obey the prophetic invi- 
tation—‘* Omnes sitientes, venite ad aquas: et qui non habetis argentum 
properate, emite et comedite.”’* Trust the experience of men, who 
long, like you, have trod the common ways of life, and who assure you 
that it will be so, that you will be filled with benediction, filled with 
joy; that from the martyrdom of a sanguinary world, you will come to 
this peace. Yes, it is so; we may well say it who have received the 
mercy of the Lord in the midst of his temple. <«Sicut audivimus, ita et 
vidimus in civitate Dei nostri, in monte sancto ejus. Alleluja.”’ 

‘¢ Whosoever desires to come happily after death to the joys of the 
celestial kingdom, ought,” says an ascetic writer of the middle ages, 
‘‘while in health and life, frequently to visit the house of God, willingly 
to hear preaching, often to repair to confession, and seek to gain indul- 
gences. Happy the people, and greatly laudable, who leaving vain 
exhibitions, hasten to the house of prayer, and to the announcement of 
the divine word. Beautiful spectacle! to behold the temple of God 
every where filled with the faithful, and the market places quiet, undis- 
turbed by the business of the world.”+ «+ No place on the earth,” says 
Louis of Blois, ‘‘is more grateful to Christians than the house of prayer, 
where the sacrifice of the mass is daily celebrated in presence of assist- 
ing angels—so that from the holy temple these men can scarcely be torn 
away; and if they behold them ata distance, and are prevented from 
entering them, they at least salute them with a devout heart, and reli- 
giously adore the Lord of eternal Majesty.’’t 

In the mere remembrance of the divine mysteries, men found an as- 
sistance in the great combat of life. ** Alas! if I could go into achurch,”’ 
we hear one cry, “if I could be where our Lord is lifted up, and appears 
to the congregation in sacramental presence—then, in that blessed mo- 
ment, I should die of rapture !’’ In this mystic Jerusalem the prophecy 
is already in a great measure fulfilled—God wipes away all tears from 
the eyes of men, and there is no more death, nor any more grief, nor 
lamentation, nor sorrow, for the former things have passed away ; and he 
who sitteth upon the throne has accomplished his word, and hath made 
all things new. ‘The heart-rending regrets of humanity in its humblest 
state, and the mighty woes of genius, which the vulgar cannot conceive, 
are alike here forgotten. ‘* Felix hora, quando Jesus vocat de lacrymis 
ad gaudium spiritus !”” Can any thing be more affecting than this lan- 
guage of the middle ages in expressing the abundance of their joy ? 
Hugo de St. Victor speaks of the mystic sweetness of the ecclesiastical 
mysteries. || ‘‘O what grace hath our Lord granted to me!’’ cries a poor 
recluse, to one who was compassionating her condition: «I might be 
sick, and I am well; I might be living far away in Pagan lands, and I 
am born here a Christian, in the neighbourhood of beautiful churches 
and of holy priests; I might be blind and deaf, but I hear the toll of 
bells, hear the chaunts of the choir, and every morning the image of 
my Saviour on the cross seems to speak to my heart in words of love. 
I am dead, and I live only for grace, for the chaunts of the church, and 
for the holy mass, Ah, my dear friend! when I enter the house of the 
TA 5 bi SR RSA UL ITI Ee ME MRM SERENA 


* Isa. lyols t Thom. 4 Kempis, Sermonum iii. pars 9. 
+ Enchirid. Pavul. lib. i. in fin. | Speculum de Myst. Ecclesis, Prolog. 


430 MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


Lord, and the cathedral high and majestic encompasses me with so much 
grace and magnificence, every doubt, every earthly disquietude vanishes 
immediately. ‘She smoke of the incense, the voice of the priest, which 
rises from the altar when I prostrate myself, awakens in my heart an 
impassioned fervour. ‘The burning tapers remind me by their secret 
flame, of the secret of the world and of creation, and a thrilling emotion 
spreads over my whole body when I think of the mysteries of which 
these are the signs. I meditate and I pray. The Creator and Saviour 
move me with interior and ineffable words, which are heard at the bot- 
tom of my soul. I feel within me a love above all love—a beatitude— 
a felicity—a celestial breath—and then the bell tolls, and the mystery 
is accomplished : then a shuddering runs through my veins and through 
the marrow of my bones, and I feel that I am a Christian; that the in- 
carnate Saviour is near me, and that he looks upon me with love.” 

Some will recognize here the master’s hand, which is employed in 
moulding an ideal world: but there is nothing in this of fiction. Of the 
intensity of these feelings we have monuments still existing in the stu- 
pendous cathedrals of the middle ages. In the year 1276, on the festi- 
val of the Purification, when Bishop Conrad, after celebrating mass, had 
marked the spot on which the first stone was to be placed of the cathe- 
dral tower of Strasbourg, such was the earnestness of two of the labour- 
ers, contending who should be the first to put his hand to the holy 
work, that one of them in the struggle received a mortal wound from a 
shovel ; and in consequence of this accident, it was not until nine days 
had elapsed, and the place had been again blessed, that the bishop 
would permit them to resume the work of laying the foundation. When 
Desiderius, the abbot of Monte Casino, was about to rebuild the church 
of that monastery, having conveyed marbles thither from Rome, so 
great was the fervour of the faithful, that the first column was borne from 
the base of the mountain to the summit upon the shoulders of the mul- 
titude.* In the eleventh century, Bertha, the mother of St. Eberhard, 
Archbishop of Salzburg, carried stones on her shoulders walking bare- 
foot for the space of half a league, to serve in the construction of the 
church of St. Mary, which was then being built in her own village of 
Allerstorff.t We read of churches, as that of Burgo St. Sepulchro, being 
built by men who, like the two noble pilgrims, Ascanus and Cigidius, 
returning from the holy sepulchre, had been visited with heavenly 
dreams, as they slept on the margin of limpid fountains: + we read of 
saints, like Maur, who succeeded Zeno in Verona’s chair, retiring to 
mountains and building churches at a fountain: || and well might the 
presence of such sweet refreshment awaken the remembrance of those 
never failing waters which spring up unto eternal life. The churches 
of the middle ages are all standing memorials of the fervour with which 
men thirsted after justice, worshipping God day and night with sacred 
mysteries and holy song. 

‘‘Devout persons,”’ says St. Bonaventura, ‘‘experience sometimes 
such a charm of sensible pleasures in the assemblies of the faithful, that 
they seem as if embalmed in the agreeable perfume which surrounds 
them, and dissolved in the sweetness of celestial harmony. Perchance 
this is the grace of God to encourage the imperfect in their commence- 


* Chronic. S, Monast. Casinensis, lib. iii. c. 28. t+ Germania Sacra, tom. ii. 245. 
! Italia Sacra, iii. 195. || Id. v. 692. 


AGES OF FAITH. 431 


ment of a holy life, or it is the fulness of spiritual perfection, which by 
reason of the union of the soul with the body is communicated to the 
senses; or perhaps even it is a favour bestowed upon the body, that as 
it has been partaker of sorrow, and mortification with the soul, it may 
now also participate in its joy, for as the body labours with the soul, 
and both have their sufferings, there may be justice in imparting even 
to the body some consolation in the present as well as in the future 
life.”’* ‘he Catholic discipline rested upon this conviction, expressed 
by Lombez, that «man must have pleasure. ‘That if he find it not in 
the service of God, he will look for it in the false joys of the world; 
for he feels that he is made to possess happiness, and he endeavours to 
attain his destiny.’”’ If he had found barred against him the portals of 
the house of God, he would have sought admittance to the assemblies 
of vain pleasure, though shame and ruin were sure to be his end. 
Showing the benefit derived from frequenting the assemblies of the faith- 
ful, the seraphic doctor observes that Saul, on joining a company of 
prophets became himself a prophet, and being separated from them, fell 
into reprobation. St. Thomas being absent from the assembly of the 
apostles was deprived of the sight of our Saviour lately risen, and on 
his return to them he received this honour; and it was when all the 
disciples were assembled together that they all received the Holy 
Ghost.t In fact, it was in the churches that the most signal conver- 
sions in the middle ages were known to have been made. Many who 
entered like that old man seen by Abbot Paul, black and cloudy, drawn 
contrary wise by demons, while their good angel followed at a distance, 
returned from it like him, shining with a sudden whiteness, having their 
good angel close at their side, while the demons followed afar off.t 
‘*St. Mary of Egypt,’ say the old writers, ‘‘may proceed with the 
devout multitude of pilgrims to the holy city, to celebrate the festival 
of the exaltation of the cross, less to adore him who died on it, than to 
render it the witness of her disorders, and yet then perhaps will be the 
moment when the designs of the mercy of God may call her to rise from 
the dead. ‘The Church prays that our vices may be cured by the 
sacred mysteries, and that we may receive everlasting remedies ;”’|| 
that her solemnities ‘‘may both confer upon us the remedies of the 
present life, and grant us the rewards of eternity.”’§ History is not 
without mention of memorable examples to exhibit the fulfilment of such 
prayers. Will you hear the great poet who sung the recovery of Jeru- 
salem, recount to you his own experience? ‘*A time there was,”’ says. 
Tasso, ‘* when I, with clouds of sensuality darkening my mind, could 
only recognize thee, O Lord, as a certain reason of the universe; for I 
doubted whether thou hadst created the world or endowed man with an 
immortal soul, and I doubted of many things which flowed from that 
source ; for how could I firmly believe in the sacraments, or in the author- 
ity of the pontiff, or in hell, or purgatory, or in the Incarnation of thy Son, 
if I doubted of the immortality of the soul? Willingly I would have kept 
down my understanding, of itself curious and wandering, and believed 
whatever the holy Catholic Roman Church believes and teaches; but 
this I desired, O Lord, not so much through love of thy infinite good- 


* De Reformat. Hominis Exter. cap. 80. + Speculum Novitiorum, cap. 23. 
+ Ivonis Carnot. Decret. pars xvii. 58. | Post Com. Exub. Sab. § Id. 


432 ; MORES CATHOLICI; OR, 


ness, as through a certain servile fear which I had of the pains of hell; 
for often there used to sound horribly to my imagination the angelic 
trumpet of the great day of rewards and punishments; and I saw thee | 
sitting upon the clouds, and I heard thee utter words full of terror, depart 
ye cursed into everlasting fire. And this thought was so strong in me, 
that sometimes I used to be obliged to impart it to some friend or ac- 
quaintance, and in consequence of this fear I used to go to confession 
and to communion in the times and manner prescribed by thy Roman 
Church; and if at any time 1 thought I had omitted mention of any sin 
through negligence or shame, though it was ever so little and vile, I 
repeated my confession, and often made a general confession of all my 
errors. Yet thou knowest that always I desired the exaltation of thy 
faith with an incredible affection, and that I always wished, though per- 
haps with a fervour more mundane than spiritual, that the seat of thy faith 
and pontificate in Rome might be preserved for ever. And thou know- 
est that the name of Lutheran or heretic, was abhorred and abominated 
by me as a pestiferous thing, and that my doubts were merely an inte- 
rior affliction, until thou didst begin to warm and rejoice my heart with 
the flames of thy love: and then by degrees, by means of frequenting 
oftener the sacred offices and praying every day, my faith grew stronger 
from day to day, and I became sensible from experience that it is thy 
gift, and I learned to see my past folly in having presumed to imagine, 
that I could discover by my intelligence the secret things of thy essence, 
and estimate by the measure of human reason, thy goodness, thy jus- 
tice, thy omnipotence.’’* 

This affecting passage only verifies what the writers of the middle 
ages affirm with regard to the effect of assisting and communicating at 
the sacred mysteries. ‘Effectus Eucharistie,” say they, ‘¢sunt pre- 
Servare a peccatis, augere gratiam, terrenorum odium infundere, ad eter- 
norum amorem mentem elevare, illuminare intellectum, succendere affec- 
tum, conferre anime et corpori puritatem, conscientie pacem et letitiam, 
atque inseparabilem cum Deo unionem.” To these adorable mysteries 
of the altar the faithful came, pressed by various wants. ‘‘Some,”’ as 
St. Bonaventura says, ‘hastened thither, moved by the force of calam- 
ity to lay their sorrows at the feet of Jesus. Others came to desire 
some grace and especial mercy, knowing that the heavenly Father can 
refuse nothing to his Son. Others were constrained to fly thither to 
proclaim their gratitude, and to pour forth the love of a thankful heart, 
knowing that there is nothing so worthy of being presented to God as 
the sacred body and blood of the eternal victim. Others pressed for- 
ward to give glory to God and to honour his saints, for it is in the cele- 
bration of these mysteries of love that we can pay worthy homage to 
his adorable majesty, and testify reverence for those who served him. 
Lastly, others hastened on the wings of charity and compassion, for it 
was there that they could hope to obtain salvation for the living and 
rest for the dead.”’*t ‘Thus to the thirsty pilgrims through the rocks of 
the desert did the fountains of water appear. ‘Thus did the generation 
of those who sought justice receive benediction from the Lord, and 
mercy from God their Saviour. 


pe ne li 


* Torquato Tasso, Discorso sopra vari accidenti della sua vita. scritto a Scipion 
Gonzaga. t De Reformat. Hominis Exter. cap. 82. 


Tyee ? 
Ant “hs At a 4 


wi ‘e 


“Y 
> 
4 
tT 
© 
ae | 
™ 
uw) 
a 
N 
oO 
Ls 
5 
a 


= 
Eg 
© 
= 
Me 
° 
4) 
w 
D 
4 
= 
° 
L 
ro) 
= 
7 
© 
oO 
nn 
rf 
= 
° 
= 


ary—Speer Library 


Princeton Theological Semin 


MH 


AIAN 


ill 


1 1012 00066 6083 


eh A ae ak a a 


oe we eines 


phe Ne eta ber ream ay ah er ets We) SeenON ae OP UEs 


i SS Bh a 


